


Winds of Change 2: Blizzard

by AlterEgon



Series: Winds of Change [3]
Category: Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alicante, Angels and Demons, Crossover, David the Silent, Disability, Idris - Freeform, Intrigue, Investigations, Major Character Injury, Multi, Paraplegia, Shadowhunter history, TW:Injury to hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-02-19 21:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 35
Words: 190,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: Freshly returned from an unplanned adventure in which they learned that the world was not quite as they had been led to believe all their lives, Alec and his friends set about secretly researching the truth of nephilim politics and nephilim history. When a mission goes wrong, leaving Jace unable to return to field duty, a quick change of plans is required: Relegated to Idris, they need to continue their investigations, hone newfound skills, and find a way to clear Alec of the accusations he finds himself under for negligently wounding a fellow soldier.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read the TMI books. I'm not planning to read the books. Nevertheless, I use the Wiki as well as the published "Reference books" for the sake of worldbuilding. Full list of sources in the Annex.
> 
> Once again, I would like to thank everyone involved in creating this work:  
> Tao, for being my sounding board, contributing ideas, generating names (you rock at names!), listening to me reading out the chapters and advice on archery.  
> Gaurungi, for feedback on comprehensibility.  
> MM, Son of the other MM, for cross-checking certain details and letting me watch him test-drive my horse and take notes. You're welcome to borrow Billy any time we're in the same country, and your payment for consultation services rendered can be found inside the story, as requested.  
> My dearest F., for relentless cheerleading and goading me to write one more scene, just one more scene tonight!  
> Our own JC, beta, friend, provider of Shadowhunters-themed birthday gifts. You know you should have been - or maybe not?

_November 13 th, 2016_

"Descendants of the Horned God, eh?" The dark-skinned woman asked without looking up from her work.

She was holding her client's hand between hers, the light of magic sparkling around her fingers as she poured healing power into shredded and only partially healed flesh, fusing and strengthening the nerves, tendons and muscles before allowing the power that had previously kept everything together well enough to give the man some careful use of his hands to dissipate.

"Yeah," he said. "Who would have thought?"

Under her touch, the angry red scars that crisscrossed the inside of his fingers, his palm and his wrist faded into lines so fine they were barely visible even if one knew to look for them.

Changing her hold on his hand, she turned his arm to get a look at the other mark, a little farther up his forearm. An intricate design had been cut into skin and muscle there, with another cut slicing right through it. She stroked her fingertips, still sparkling, over it, smoothing the raised welts of scar tissue into the surrounding skin until they, too, were all but gone.

"Do you have any idea who did this to you or who planted that curse on you?"

"No. But I know where to start looking."

That was simplifying a little. He had seen the man who had cut the lesser curse into his arm, and he was sure that hadn't been a warlock. He had no idea who he _was_ , though. On the other hand, he was sure that the person who had left the other curse on him – the one that had made it impossible to properly heal his injuries before now – had, in fact, been a warlock. And he knew where he was going to start his search for that one.

She let go of his hand and he took a moment to study her work, moving his fingers in quick patterns and relishing in the lack of pain as he did so.

Snapping his fingers open, he called magical fire to his flat palm, letting it burn for a moment before closing his hand over it and dousing the flame.

"Yes! That's more like it." It was the first time in three weeks that he had been able to do any magic without working through the pain of his hands protesting the exercise.

She took his other hand to repeat the procedure, just as a young girl came skipping into the room, an excited smile on her face. "Magnus has a magical penny in his fridge that makes pie!" she announced. "Alec showed it to me! It's strawberry!"

"That's right," Magnus said. "It was a gift from a very powerful sorceress."

"Don't let her hear you call them that." A tall, lean man, dressed elegantly in black and dark red, had appeared in the doorway. "You know they only say 'sorcerer' when they mean 'evil'."

Magnus gave him a fond smile, the light shining in his eyes the moment he spotted the other man leaving no doubt as to their relationship.

"I don't think even Auntie Bea can hear us without actually calling the phone," he noted before turning to the girl. "Madzie, why don't you take Alexander back to the kitchen and get all of us some of that pie so we can eat when Catarina's done with my hands?"

With a happy nod at him, the girl spun and raced back the way she had come, slowing just enough to reach out for the other man's hand and pull him with her as she passed him.

Laughing, Alec obeyed her and Magnus' command.

Catarina shook her head at him. "Only Magnus Bane would disappear for two weeks, come back with his hands ripped to shreds, a curse on him _and_ carrying a bag full of powerful artifacts," she observed. "After befriending a group of legendary beings known in their legends to be extremely isolationist."

"Alec and Isabelle did most of the befriending," Magnus admitted. "And they're not as isolationist as they used to be anyway. What do I owe you?" He tested the range of motion and dexterity in his second hand and nodded with satisfaction at the result.

"You think I'm going to charge an old friend? Why don't we just say you owe me a favor?"

Magnus laughed. "That's a very bad bargain to make with a warlock. And who'd know that better than I?"

He let it go, though. Catarina was an old friend who wasn't going to double-cross him or come up with some immensely unpleasant favor. She probably would have healed his hands for free if he hadn't asked.

Alec and Madzie returned, carrying plates with pieces of strawberry pie.

"Magnus has a phone in his fridge," Madzie announced.

Magnus rolled his eyes. "That's because the fridge is one of the few places it can't get out of on its own, and I needed a break from Gwen calling about potion recipes."

Alec barely made an effort to stifle his snicker. The phones they had been presented with upon leaving Canada two weeks earlier were special in many respects. They never lost reception, they never ran out of battery, they survived being soaked, boiled, dropped from high places and any number of other abuse, and they invariably found them again, no matter where they were left.

However, that also meant that certain members of the family they'd been staying with during their recent involuntary trip to Calgary were calling at the most inopportune moments, and about the damnedest things. Auntie Gwen, the family alchemist, had made a point of consulting with Magnus about various old recipes she had filed away, passed down through the generations of family, written near-illegibly, partially lost or containing such precise measurements as "a bit of" or "just enough".

"I need to get going," Alec said, glancing at the time, as soon as the pie was gone. "Sorry to leave you with the dishes, Magnus."

The warlock gave him a fond smile. "It's alright, Alexander. After all, now I can—" he snapped the fingers of his right hand, causing blue sparks to shoot up from them, "take care of that quite easily. You go and make sure no one's getting into trouble. Do you want me to make you a portal?"

Alec almost declined. It wasn't that far. He could easily walk, or even run, the distance. The exercise would be welcome. Then again, after weeks of limiting his magic to the inevitable while a slowly dissipating curse prevented the application of a healing spell to his injuries, Magnus was probably itching for performing one of his larger spells.

Maybe it would be good for him to have direct proof that his hands were truly healed now, and he was back in full control of his power, too.

So he nodded, smiling, and stepped a little to the side to give his boyfriend the space he needed for his work. "That'd be nice."

*

Alec emerged in the park outside the wards of the Institute.

To mundane eyes, it was nothing but an abandoned church, a building dilapidated and ruined enough to not invite anyone to enter. If anything, people might wonder why it was allowed to remain standing like that, without anyone either fixing it up or tearing it down.

Those with the Sight, of course, saw something different. The structure stood tall and proud, with nearly every single window lit.

With quick strides, he crossed the grass to the steps leading up to the large entrance, pushing it open with only a moment's hesitation.

Recently, entering the Institute made him feel like entering a prison.

It was a prison, admittedly, that he voluntarily confined himself to, but some days it was hard to remember that this place was his home and had been for most of his life.

The things that Victor Aldertree, currently in charge of the place, had done while they had been gone had included imposing a curfew. No shadowhunter was to spend the night out of the Institute unless on strict orders. That included no sleepovers at Magnus' place for him.

Jace had pointed out that it could hardly hurt if Alec was spending the night in a place that was probably one of the best-warded locations in New York, when everyone knew exactly where he was.

That argument had been shot down by Aldertree immediately, by his reminder that, in fact, Alec was not a private citizen to do as he pleased, but a Nephilim soldier, and as such was bound to orders. And orders said that all soldiers were to be in quarters at night.

Though the reason he had cited for the rather unpopular rule – the disappearance of a quartet of the best shadowhunters in New York – had resolved itself, the curfew had not been lifted.

Some of the people he passed in the hallway seemed to scowl at Alec. He pushed the thought aside, putting it down to nothing but imagination. Still, he wondered if some of them _did_ fault them for being kept indoors like children.

On their last assignment, when they'd been supposed to simply reconnoiter and determine the truth behind reports Aldertree had supposedly received, they'd been surprised by a group of demons, apparently summoned by someone or something. While they'd been engaged in battle with them, the demon summoner had opened a portal or a rift to some other dimension, and, realizing that letting him escape had a great potential for disaster, they'd followed him through.

They'd managed to dispatch of the demons, and the summoner, though at the expense of their phones, which hadn't survived the dimensional jump, and their weapons, because adamas apparently didn't survive the jump _back_. The summoner, now dead and impossible to question, had had the artifacts on him that they needed to open a pathway back home, where they found that time apparently moved differently on that other plane.

Ten days had passed in their home dimension when they returned to the Institute.

Or so went the story that they told, straight-faced and correspondingly, describing demons that no one knew on sight but that, upon consulting the Institute's database, could eventually be found. They took the form of whirlwinds that would pick up any discarded weapon, shot arrow or other item that could be used as a weapon, and integrate it into their bodies, which meant that fighting them posed a certain risk of ending up dead by one's own weapon.

Aldertree had listened to them, questioned them over and over, and had eventually had to let it go.

None of them doubted that he knew that that wasn't what had happened.

The mission had been a trap, and they'd barely avoided being bait for a demon general and his host, all of which were now reduced to ashes and banished back to their home dimension, as happened to demons if their bodies in the present world were destroyed. They had fought the whirlwinds, though in a different context, which made it easier to give a vivid description.

They'd counted on it that Aldertree and whoever gave him his orders weren't going to betray their involvement in the original abduction – something Alec and his friends were sufficiently convinced of – by accusing them of telling something that didn't even come close to the truth.

And so he had grudgingly accepted their tale, reprimanded them sternly for jumping dimensions and engaging in battle when they'd only been meant to observe, and dismissed them to await further orders.

Alec glanced at the camera in the hallway in front of his room as he passed.

Having grown up with the knowledge that they were being recorded everywhere in the Institute, he'd never minded them before. They were for their own safety, after all.

Safety from what? He wondered now.

He remembered the times they had used the camera footage to track what had happened in various parts of the Institute. It had been helpful, and they'd gleaned important information from it. Still, a new voice had recently grown in his head, and that one kept pointing out the many possibilities of abuse for a camera feed like that.

 _Big Brother is watching you_ , a quote shot through his head unbidden.

That in mind, he forced himself not to look at where he knew the recording device was placed in his room. He'd never done that before, and if anyone was, indeed, watching him, they would surely notice that he had become more uncomfortable with the principle of having his every movement in the Institute recorded, every word he spoke logged.

He tossed his jacket on the bed and went over to his mini fridge, sticking the obligatory paper bag inside that he brought home from any trip to Magnus' place. It may have been bordering on paranoid, but he didn't fancy someone checking the feeds and figuring out that there was pie coming out of his fridge without anyone ever putting it in.

That might lead to someone actually checking, and realizing there was a magicked Canadian penny in there that served as a landing point for equally Canadian pastry at irregular intervals. They'd been surprised to find that the pennies actually worked inside the Institute. The wards were apparently not made to block that particular kind of magic.

With appearances hopefully sufficiently taken care of, Alec reversed direction and left his room again.

They'd been lucky that no one had actually bothered to clear out their bedrooms while they'd been presumed dead. Without any pressing need to use those rooms, however, it had been decided that Maryse, who had, after all raised three of the four of them, was to be given some time to mourn before she would be expected to pack their things and send them to Idris. Their return had been just in time to keep Jace's grandmother from portaling over to demand immediate release of his possessions to her.

Alec's next path took him to the infirmary.

When they'd left on that ill-fated mission, his youngest brother Max had been recovering from a severe head injury at the hands of Jonathan Morgenstern. Only a risky procedure, attempted as a last resort after everything else had failed, had kept him alive. Max had woken soon after that, and to everyone's relief, been alert and coherent.

It hadn't been until the next time he woke that they had to face the truth of the matter: The trauma to his skull, the pressure on his brain built up by bleeding and swelling tissue, hadn't been without consequences.

Things hadn't changed much in the time since then.

Max was sitting up in bed, but there was no smile on his face as he spotted Alec.

Their mother, who spent much of her free time with her youngest son these days, did smile, and the expression barely looked strained.

Alec knew that it wasn't that she wasn't happy to see him. Quite the opposite. After thinking all her older children dead for ten days, and her youngest possibly permanently crippled, she'd been overjoyed to have them back.

But she also knew that something was off, and that her children might still be in danger.

If she hadn't had a hunch about it before, she certainly did after that time she'd caught the four of them outside, a little way away from the Institute where they were quietly conferring with each other.

*

"Won't you tell me what really happened while you were gone?" Maryse asked outright the moment she had their attention.

None of them insulted her by claiming they didn't know what she was talking about. They looked at each other, then at her, and then Alec shook his head.

"You don't want to know, Mom," he said.

"I do," she asserted. She looked from Alec, to Izzy, to Jace and back to Alec. "You're my children, I—"

"Mom." Alec's voice had an edge to it.

Maryse waited. She knew the three of them well enough to have been certain, from the beginning, that the story they had told about their absence had been mostly made up. Worse, she was sure that Victor Aldertree knew it just as well as she did.

It surprised her to no end when he accepted the tale without questioning it, dismissing the quartet with a simple order to report for duty the next morning.

That would have been enough keep her mind spinning as she tried to make sense of the situation. There was something else, though, that chilled her to the core every time she thought of it: She'd been talking to Aldertree when her children and Clary had walked into the Institute. And there, for a split second, while everyone around them fell into a moment of astonished silence, she'd seen an expression of pure, undiluted horror on the man's face.

He'd covered it up quickly enough, pushing past her to accost the four and demand to know where they'd been.

She was sure she hadn't imagined it, though – even more so since, facing away from the door, she hadn't seen what had caused his reaction until she'd turned around.

"Max needs you."

Maryse was about to tell him to stop trying to change the subject, but realized that he hadn't.

"If he thinks you know something that everyone else doesn’t know, he'll go for the first thing he can find to put pressure on you." That was Isabelle. "We know how he is."

'He' being Aldertree, of course.

She swallowed hard. They had just as good as admitted, without admitting to anything, that something had happened that they were keeping secret, that Aldertree was keeping secret, and that Aldertree was likely willing to go to some lengths to keep that way.

She closed her eyes for a moment, nodding slowly.

"One thing, though," she said. "I have to know: Are you in any danger?"

She could read the answer on their faces. She'd known it really, without even asking. She'd felt it since the day they'd returned.

"Probably."

*

Alec smiled back at her, drawing up a chair so Max wouldn't have to look up at him quite so far.

"Magnus says hello. How are you doing?"

Max gave him a gloomy look. His hands were clasped in front of him to keep them from trembling, his right covering the left and concealing the lack of deliberate motion in it.

"The medics say Max is ready to move back to his own room," Maryse said. Her voice sounded cheerful, but Alec could see it was costing her to keep it up.

"Yeah." Max, in contrast, made no effort to hide his displeasure. "'Cause they don't know what else to do with me, so they're throwing me out."

"Hey." Alec put his hand on his little brother's. "Don't you think you'll be more comfortable – in your own room, with your own things?"

Max gave him a scathing look. "No."

"Fine," Alec said, drawing out the syllable a little. "So how about some exercise? I've got time to give you a hand."

Max could walk, after a fashion, though he was dragging his left leg and needed support to keep from losing his balance.

"Whatever for?" the boy asked. "It's not like they'll ever let me in the field now."

"Well," Alec said, "not unless you get back in shape, and you won't get back in shape without exercise – so there." He thought he did a pretty good job at sounding more confident than he felt. He'd been there when the medics had told Maryse and Robert that brain injuries were tricky and that while Max was out of danger, there was no telling how permanent the damage was. They hadn't sounded too confident.

"They said I should start studying so I could be a scholar later – or think about how I'd like to be a Silent Brother one day."

A shadowhunter wounded beyond repair in the line of duty could draw a small pension and settle in Idris, preferably taken care of by family. Depending on their age and the precise nature of their wounds and their skills, they could find a place as instructors or in a trade if retirement wasn't to their liking or otherwise not an option – while most nephilim did field duty as was their legacy, some people had to keep Alicante up and running, after all.

Those cases were rare, though. Thanks to their angelic blood, most wounds that weren't fatal healed well enough to let the nephilim return to their former lives.

Max hadn't been wounded on an assignment, and considering that he was only ten and a few weeks past his runing ceremony, and had so far not had the opportunity to contribute much to the discharge of their duty of protecting mundanes and keeping demons at bay, he would most certainly be expected to do something with his life.

Alec pushed his thoughts aside. "So prove them wrong," he suggested.

"Easy for you to say," Max muttered.

"Max, it's only been a month," Alec chided. "And they didn't even let you exercise for all of that. What'd you tell a trainee who complained that he hasn't mastered a new martial art yet after a month?"

Max glared at him. "But I already _used to_ be able to walk and do things."

"So you have the advantage of muscle memory in your favor," Alec noted. "Up now, soldier. And if you're lucky, I'll share the pie with you that I brought home from Magnus'. It's strawberry."

*

"You'd think copying them out would be a good way to commit them to memory," Clary muttered as she pored over the large volume, slowly turning another page with all the reverence for the old paper that she could muster.

"Copying the Gray Book is an involved process that requires plenty of preparation and special materials," Isabelle Lightwood recited. She stood behind her friend, leaning in so that the camera up by the ceiling would record their backs, and nothing else. "Many of these runes are so powerful that normal, untreated paper would be unable to hold them."

Clary angled her phone to catch as much of the page as she could without moving into a position that would make it obvious that she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to. "How _charming_ ," she muttered, drawing a laugh from Izzy.

The rule of not trying to copy out runes in pencil, but to merely learn the designs by heart until one could replicate them with a stele, was one of the things that fell right into place with the discovery they had made regarding their angelic marks during their recent absence: Far from being the vital, indispensable tools they had taken them for, the steles were, in fact, very much optional.

There was absolutely no way that wouldn't have become obvious if people had routinely been copying out runes for practice.

As it was, Clary had sighed and abandoned her original plan of copying those pages missing from the mutilated issue of the Gray Book owned by their friends in Calgary then and there and declare it part of her studies. Photographing pages in a book they weren't allowed to remove from the room it was kept in, under supervision of a camera that she was reasonably sure was going to be checked sooner or later to make sure she wasn't doing anything there that she wasn't supposed to, was a bit of a challenge.

After a few false starts that hadn't rendered any usable images, they'd developed a method that worked. Since then, a session with the Gray Book had become a regular addition to their day, with either Izzy or Jace 'instructing' Clary as they went through it page by page, spending the same amount of detail on those that they needed a copy of as they did on the others.

Taken the way they were, rather than by holding the camera above the book and getting a clear shot, they wouldn't do much good as a printout, but they served as a memory aid well enough to allow Clary to draw up proper copies of her own.

She mostly worked on those while at Magnus' loft, where they'd all spent more than the average amount of time – officially because it was where Alec was mostly found during the day, while Aldertree had no assignments for them and didn't seem in any great hurry to arrange proper training for Clary.

Alec, of course, used the unusual amount of free time to spend time with his boyfriend, especially since he wasn't allowed to actually stay the night without incurring the wrath of the current head of the Institute. None of them wanted to find out what kind of punishment Aldertree would come up with if any of them didn't honor his curfew.

"You know," Magnus had said the first time he'd watched Clary painstakingly copy out a page onto sketch paper, "I could probably find you a copy of that book somewhere on the market."

She'd been about to inquire about the details, but Jace, who was helping Alec clear the table after the meal of Chinese takeout they had just shared, had objected immediately.

"I can just imagine what Aldertree is going to do if he finds out you're asking around about a Gray book," he'd pointed out. "He'd come up with some reason to have you dragged in for questioning."

"That'd break his own rules," Magnus had quipped, "No downworlders on the premises, remember?"

None of them doubted that Victor Aldertree wouldn't have the least problem with breaking his own rules if he thought it would get him anywhere, though, and so they continued with their original plan. The copied pages never left Magnus' loft, and the pictures were deleted from the phone's memory as soon as they were no longer needed.

*

Jace knew he was dreaming.

It wasn't a nightmare – he hadn't had any of those since he'd been properly shielded against outside influences again – , but it wasn't an entirely comfortable dream either. That was mostly because the dream was also a memory, and the memory implied something. He just wasn't sure what it was.

In the memory, he and Clary were outside on a hill in the dark. It was just after midnight and they should have been cold, given the temperatures this late in the year, and the fact that they had discarded their clothes a little while earlier.

They weren't though, and that had at least as much to do with the exercise they were getting as it had with the raw power running through them, feeding on their arousal even while feeding, in turn, into it. He felt Clary's hands hot on his body, her mouth on his skin, and responded in kind, abandoning most of himself to the rush of elation.

That was when he felt that strange power that they had channeled grasp him, lift him away from the hill and the people gathered there in pairs and little groups, carrying his essence on a current of air. He could feel Clary soar with him, and Alec through their _parabatai_ bond far above him, boosted by a far greater power than he had available to tap into.

He let it happen. It felt right. It felt like, for the first time in a very long time, he was doing exactly what he was meant to do.

Then he felt the shock of a sudden stop through his bond to Alec, felt him guided back down towards solid ground, and while he was still wondering at that, felt a pressure build up in his body, looking for an outlet.

He never quite stopped being aware of his body, and Clary's, closely entwined and moving in the same rhythm, driving each other closer and closer to that point—

\--where they, too, were suddenly jerked to a halt by invisible tethers spread out over their bodies. Their runes served as anchors, keeping them from progressing any farther.

It wasn't a painful sensation, except in the enkeli runes, which burned for a moment as if freshly activated.

They, too, were descending again now, while Alec had already reached firm ground again.

The experience left behind a feeling of having been cheated of something that should have happened, a disappointment he couldn't quite put into words.

He woke, and lay awake for a while, pondering the situation. The memory was clear enough in his mind even without revisiting it in dreams, but his sleeping brain didn't seem to be able to let go of it anyway.

Talking about it with their hosts the next day, who had felt the four of them soar as they themselves dug roots into the soil while Jack the half-dragon had seemed to erupt into a ball of fire burning as brightly as a little sun, it had been decided that everything pointed to one thing: They represented Air, much in the same way as the Gale family represented Earth, though there was something that kept them from realizing their full potential and actually, physically, _manifesting_ their element in the way the Gale males did when they grew antlers like the stags that were their symbol.

In some way, that was connected to their runes, or, more likely, the steles they used to burn them into their skin.

Jace sighed as he caught himself absent-mindedly rubbing at one of the runes on his arm, wiping at it in the way they had learned to remove a charm, which really amounted to nothing but a rune applied by any means that wasn't a stele.

It did nothing to the rune, as he knew well enough since this wasn't the first time he'd tried. It wasn't because he was actually wiping on top of a glamor either – a glamor fitted precisely to his skin, merely matching his own appearance and hiding the extra charms they'd taken to using in lieu of activating their runes.

Whatever the steles did, they had plenty of reason to assume it wasn't good for them.

His phone gave a plaintive bleep, and he realized what it was that had woken him: An incoming text message.

For a moment, he was tempted to silence the phone and go back to sleep. He could read the message tomorrow.

On second thoughts, considering the time of the night, the message was probably from Calgary, and those messages had a horrible habit of not allowing themselves to be silenced.

He glanced at the small screen, seeing his suspicions confirmed.

_Come visit tomorrow if you can get away. Text before you portal in. Bring your friend if you like._

The number was Auntie Bea's.

He texted back a single letter: _K_.

Personally, he had little desire to bring the 'friend', which he was sure referred to Simon. Most likely, the other four owners of Gale phones had received the same message, though, and Clary at least would surely want to bring her best friend if he had the time to accompany them.

Sure enough, Clary's phone on the other side of the bed they shared was putting up the same complaints about being ignored that his own had. Unfortunately, between the two of them Clary had the much sounder sleep.

Since it wasn't very likely that he was going to go back to sleep like this, he gently elbowed his girlfriend in the side. "Phone for you," he told her when her eyelids inched open.


	2. Chapter 2

_November 14 th, 2016_

"Are Adrian and Suzan out already?"

Izzy's gaze slid over the shadowhunters assembled for the morning briefing. It was a time for Aldertree's announcements and handing out of assignments for the day. They hadn't received any assignments at all since their return, and it rankled that those with a much lesser track record than they had were sent out while they were told to enjoy a reprieve after their ordeal.

Of course, it was an open secret that this was actual punishment because they had supposedly turned a reconnaissance mission into a demon hunt without authorization.

So far, Aldertree had given no indication of how long he intended to continue this.

With the curfew firmly in place, it was rare to see anyone missing from the morning briefing, though – let alone two.

"Paul, too," Alec observed.

Make that three, then.

"Adrian's in New Zealand, waiting for a portal back," someone to their right said.

"How'd he get to New Zealand?" Izzy asked, frowning slightly.

"Dunno. Some kind of accident with a portal to where he was actually supposed to go."

Now that was odd. Portals were only supposed to be able to take you to places you were currently focusing on, which meant places you had been to before – or the person who guided you there had been to before. Why would a shadowhunter be focusing on New Zealand when sent elsewhere?

Had it been someone else, she might have filed it as a prank and taken some amusement from the feat, but this was one of Aldertree's most ardent followers.

Aldertree said nothing on the subject at all, though by the time his announcement was done, the general buzz in the room had carried further news to where they were standing towards the back: Paul had called from Egypt with a similar message. Suzan seemed to be missing, which meant that either she had gone exactly where she was supposed to, or had also had a 'portal accident' and was stuck somewhere in trouble, with no cell phone reception, or both, and had to either find the closest institute or wait for someone to track her by her runes.

One of Aldertree's people suffering a mishap with a mission might have been funny and not much cause for concern. Three of them made coincidence unlikely.

Izzy couldn't shake the feeling that she knew where they had been sent originally. Suddenly, 'text before you portal in', as the nightly message had instructed, acquired an extra layer of meaning.

"Do you have plans for today?" Clary asked brightly, tearing her from her thoughts. She'd timed it to coincide with the moment when Aldertree was approaching them on his way back to his office, making sure he would hear without letting it seem too deliberate. "I thought I should practice tracking some more. I still don't get a signal half the time."

*

Clary passed the twenty minutes they had stipulated as a head-start for the others with reviewing a singularly boring book on shadowhunter history.

The moment her phone chimed to inform her of the time, she snapped the volume shut and took the three objects her friends had left with her.

Tracking really wasn't her strong suit, and no one was going to challenge her need to practice it. No one was going to wonder if the other three activated their anti-tracking runes while they found places to hide, or to throw her off track in between either.

Holding Izzy's scarf between her hands, Clary focused. She didn't catch anything tracking-wise. Repeating the same with Alec's and Jace's objects, she got the same lack of a result.

Then again, she didn't have to. She knew precisely where she was going.

She couldn't be obvious about it, though. She had to assume that she was being watched – and followed.

Her own anti-tracking rune lit up as she turned it on. She smiled to herself. Controlling the glamor she wore was getting ingrained in habit.

Since they had started to suspect that their steles were actually harming them in some way, they had avoided using theirs. Though they carried steles, just in case they needed to mark something, the objects they used to 'activate' their own runes were merely glamored to appear as such.

Izzy's scarf wrapped around her hand, she left the Institute, taking the stairs two at a time and starting to jog down a street leading away from Magnus' loft.

She stopped a few times, silently waiting and focusing as if to check her bearings.

She was focusing indeed, though it wasn't on Izzy. The rune that amplified her hearing was turned on under the glamor, as she tried to determine if there was anyone trying to keep her in sight.

There probably was.

She turned down an alley, and another one, weaving around corners until she reached a group of people she could cut through.

Her glamor flickered as she was in the thick of it, and she emerged with the appearance of a rather generic woman, well into her thirties and not particularly memorable. She'd dropped the invisibility she'd worn before at the same time. Hiding under a different face would have been useless while anyone pursuing her could spot her by the fact that mundanes didn't know she was there.

Walking briskly, as if she had places to be, she ducked into a store and emerged a minute later in the face and clothes of a middle school girl. It was lucky she wasn't tall to begin with. She wasn't sure she could have pulled off a considerable height change with a glamor. Apart from the looks anchored in the original rune – or charm, as the case was here – those things seemed limited to what she could fix in her thoughts as the thing she _should_ be looking like. It took a twist of the mind that had caused her headaches in the beginning.

She spotted the man from the corner of her eye. He seemed only marginally familiar, like someone she might have seen around the institute but never talked to in person. There were, in fact, plenty of those.

What gave him away was that he was standing at the junction of two alleys, apparently uncertain of where to go, looking for something – and apparently invisible to the mundanes in that strange way that always made them bypass someone wearing that particular glamor, rather than walking right into them.

Following her first instinct, she walked towards him, keeping her eyes focused on the area behind him as if there wasn't a man standing right in her path, swerving just in time to avoid a collision in the same apparently thoughtless manner that the mundanes passing him did.

He didn't even turn to look at her.

Nevertheless, she changed glamors another few times, wishing she could cut across the rooftops like Alec, Jace and Izzy sometimes did. She wasn't quite that confident in her acrobatic skills, though, and having a healthy respect for heights didn't help.

She reached the loft as a businesswoman in a dark blue suit, almost colliding with Charlie Gale and a man who looked decidedly too shabby for entering this particular building, but might have been some downworlder come to see Magnus.

The High Warlock of Brooklyn was waiting for them, lounging comfortably on his sofa and laughing about something with Izzy. Simon was leaning in the frame of the door leading onto the balcony. He wasn't alone.

"Is it okay if we bring Maia, too?" Clary asked Charlie, who shrugged and resolved into Jace, just as the older man turned into Alec.

"It is," Simon said. "I asked."

Of course. Charlie and Jack had given Simon a phone, too, the day they had returned him from being held hostage in the Seelie Realm, though he'd gotten none of the other accessories.

Magnus rose gracefully to his feet, meeting Alec for a quick embrace and a slightly longer kiss before stepping back and clapping his hands. "Very well then," he said.

With a flourish, he threw up a portal, purple light streaming into his living room.

Once the portal was securely anchored, he took his phone to announce their coming. Only when he had a response did he nod at them. "Ready. Let's go."

Two at a time, they stepped through the portal.

*

The first thing Maia noticed when she stepped out of the Portal next to Izzy, who had guided her through to their destination, was that they were on a roof.

The second was that Calgary was a lot colder than New York.

She didn't have a lot of time to notice anything else, because there were enough people standing around to count as a welcoming committee, and they were crowding in as if the shadowhunters and Magnus were some relatives home from a long journey.

There was a surprising amount of hugging involved, and even Jace and Alec allowed themselves to be caught up in it, giving as well as they got.

Simon was looking on a bit quizzically. He clearly hadn't expected this enthusiastic welcome either.

An impossibly thin-looking woman detached herself from the crowd to come over to where they were standing. "Hey, Simon," she said, grinning brightly. "Won't you introduce us?"

The scent of earth was far stronger here than it had any right to be on a roof terrace, and Maia took a moment to realize it was actually carried by the women who surrounded them, forming a basic and somewhat metaphysical fragrance beneath the regular human scent. Did Simon's vampiric nose pick it up, too?

The one who'd come over to them carried a more diverse bouquet. If music had had a smell, this would have been it.

"Certainly," Simon said quickly. "Maia, this is Charlie Gale, who so kindly helped me get away from the Seelie Queen. Charlie, this is my girlfriend, Maia."

Charlie gave a half-bow to Maia, which would have seemed mocking from anyone else, but appeared perfectly natural here. "Welcome to Calgary, Maia. Don't let my sisters scare you. They know not to harm the guests."

She pointed at two identical-looking women among their group, who, as if on cue, turned and grinned.

"As long as everyone understands that Gales are friends, not food," one of them said. "And, speaking of food, we should get downstairs. Auntie Meredith sent pies. She remembers how y'all loved them last time."

Maia thought she could see Jace's eyes light up at the mention.

"Are these the special meat pies?" he asked, a hopeful tone to his voice. Clary was already taking a step towards the door.

Charlie's sister nodded.

"Then what are we waiting for? Alec, Izzy! There's basilisk pie downstairs!"

"Basilisk pie?" Maia frowned as she looked back at Charlie. "Seriously?"

"You'll love it," the older woman promised her. "Everyone loves Auntie Meredith's basilisk pie. But just in case you don't, we also have rhubarb, apple and lemon meringue. Just in case."

 

*

If the roof had felt crowded, it was nothing by comparison to the situation downstairs. Maia had had shifts at the Hunter's Moon where there had been fewer people per square foot of floor space.

The two youngest in attendance seemed barely toddlers. The oldest was a woman who looked to be skirting eighty. Women outnumbered men by about four to one – at least if one didn't count the party from New York.

"Did these people all come to say hello to you?" Maia asked, roughly in the direction of Izzy, who had entered the room just behind her.

"Probably not," Izzy allowed. "This is a pretty normal family lunch for Gale standards."

"Doesn't mean we won't say hello to you, though!" Another one of the Gale women - all of whom shared a distinct family resemblance – pulled Izzy into a quick hug without letting go of the implements she carried, which were surely meant to be put on the table.

 "Katie!" Izzy disentangled herself with a laugh. "I do need a little space to breathe. I'm not as well padded as you."

Katie laughed, not the least bit abashed. "Yes, I remember the time you tried to wear my sweater and it kept slipping every which way."

Maia had to admit that, with the sole exception of Charlie, every single Gale woman present looked singularly well endowed. It was almost enough to make a girl jealous. What was it Magnus had said about them being descended from a fertility god?

"Katie, this is our friend Maia," Izzy changed the subject, and Katie, moving along with the flow, turned, clearly ready to offer another hug.

Pointing at the knives the other woman held, Maia shook her head. "Not unless you put those down first," she said, amused despite herself. "If this is a normal lunch, what do they do for a full family gathering?"

"Meet up at the manor on Mount Royal, where there's both space and a pool."

Had she been in wolf shape, the man who had just moved close to her would have made her fur stand on end by his mere presence. A slightly paler blond than most of the other people in the room, his face was marked by two distinctive scars that gave him a bit of a roguish air. It wasn't that which she reacted to, though. He smelled of predator – the kind that was far too large to take on unless you were doing so as a full pack, and maybe even then.

"You're Jack," she said, putting two and two together. "The dragon."

"Half-dragon," Jack returned. "Don't worry. I don't eat anything I can have a conversation with anymore. Allie's decree."

*

Strangely enough, the meal in itself was at the same time one of the most chaotic and one of the most orderly such gatherings Maia had ever seen.

People were happily chattering on, sliding into and out of streams of conversation, interrupted now and then by a request for food to be passed back or forth. Still, it all seemed to merge into a large, well-rehearsed dance, and one that the shadowhunters and Magnus slipped into with a surprising ease.

Maia kept herself to an observer's role for the most part, catching bits of the various conversations going on without lingering for long in any of them.

Simon had been presented with a tall glass of thick red liquid that he'd been surprised to note was human blood. Of course they were all familiar with the downworlder bars in New York having blood of non-animal origins on the menu, but seeing the matter – and the substance – handled in such a casual manner in a private household felt strange.

Then again, this household was happily eating pie of various kinds, discussing the temperature at which fairy dust would go off if used as a spice, and the more logistical issue of where to seat the seelie bodyguard that came with the equally seelie lover of one of the family members at some upcoming gathering.

"Marine biology?" Charlie perked up as she caught Maia's response to a question about her studies. "I have a friend who has a doctorate in marine biology. I can introduce you sometime if you like."

Maia looked at her in some surprise, wondering if this was how people felt when they heard the werewolf Maia was studying that specific subject. It just seemed oddly scientific for someone who was clearly so deeply rooted in the otherworldly – or their friends.

Charlie seemed to guess at her thoughts. "Dr. Malan also happens to be a selkie," she explained. "So if you're worrying about the canine part getting in the way, don't."

"It wasn't that," Maia began, doing a double-take as she processed the rest of what she had just heard. "Did you say selkie?"

"Selkie." The older woman nodded emphatically. "Seal skins and all."

"There actually are selkies?" Simon asked, perplexed.

"But Simon." Clary was grinning at her friend. "Don't you remember? All the legends are true."

"Yeah," Simon said. "But selkies?" He fished a piece of dessert pie from Clary's plate and put it in his mouth, clearly not thinking about what he was doing.

"Simon!" Maia cautioned, but the vampire had already swallowed and, surprisingly, wasn't gagging or struggling to keep the bite from coming back up, as usually happened when he forced himself to choke down anything solid.

He froze, processing what he had just done. "It smells delicious," he declared after a moment. "It tastes delicious, and I have no idea why this works. Maybe it's the charms. Not complaining, though. Can I have a plate?" His words came faster and faster, as was usually the case when he got excited.

Maia shook her head as Jack handed him an empty plate and cutlery. If Simon thought that she was going to hover over him and pity him when he paid for eating human food with the stomachache of his life in a few hours, he'd have to think again.

Right now, she had questions about Charlie's friend with the doctorate in marine biology. She hadn't known there were selkies either.

*

Some of the people dispersed after the food was gone. Katie said something about having an appointment with a client – she was selling real estate, Maia had gathered –, Charlie's sisters let everyone know that if anyone wanted to work out they could find them in the yard, and one couple left, taking along the assorted children to give the remaining family members space to keep their attention on the reason they had invited their guests.

Two of the older women were inspecting Magnus' hands, commending the work Catarina had done on them to his promises that he would pass on their compliments to her.

Simon had moved to one of the sofas by the lower table, where Charlie was showing him some tricks on a guitar that made Maia's head spin. How could anyone who wasn't blessed with superhuman speed work an instrument that fast?

"There might be a Bard in you even," Charlie commented when Simon tried to imitate her.

"The way you say 'bard', I'm not sure that's a good thing," he returned, cautiously.

She laughed. "In my family, Bards are Wild Powers, like Seers, and, it seems Dragon Prince Sorcerers." She spared an appreciating glance in Jack's direction at the last words. "We've got extra skills, if you want to call it that. Bards can shape magic with their music."

"And you think I could learn that?" Simon didn't seem certain if he wanted to be enthusiastic about it, or wary.

Charlie shrugged. "Maybe? But you know what they say about Bards."

"Actually, I don't."

If she had some witty comeback on her tongue, she swallowed it. "Seven years apprenticed, seven years of journeying, seven years performing before you can become a master."

That tipped him out of the 'enthusiastic' range. "If that's counting from the first music lesson I had, it puts me at journeyman's level," he declared. "Except I haven't done much journeying. And I've actually had a gig recently."

Clary had organized that, and he'd been amazing.

"Some people would say becoming a vampire is a pretty big journey," Maia threw in, just as Charlie pointed out: "No one says a journeyman never gets to perform."

"We have something like Wild Powers in the shadowhunters, too," Jace noted. He and Clary had wandered over to join them, the other two not far behind. "I mean, beyond what Clary and I have from the extra angel blood Valentine gave us. It's rare, though."

"Trust me, we're rare, too," Charlie assured him. "Even if you wouldn't know it from looking at the family now, but I don't think there's ever been a situation where there were three Wild Powers at the same time before."

"Three?" Clary seemed confused. "You and Jack and…?"

"Auntie Catherine. Allie's grandmother. Seer. Banished from Calgary for meddling too much," Charlie summarized.

Simon put down the guitar he'd been trying out. "What's a Seer do?"

"Having visions of the future. And sometimes messing with the Wood, but I think that's more an Auntie Catherine thing than a Seer thing."

Clary dropped on the sofa's armrest. "So she does the Wood thing the same way you do?"

"She does the Wood thing. I go in through plants or sounds. If I can hear sounds, I can slip between. She goes in through mirror surfaces. If she can be seen in it, she can get through it."

Izzy looked like she'd had a sudden epiphany. "Is that what the magic mirror downstairs is for? Other than entertainment?"

"Was." Allie put a bowl of salted peanuts on the table. "The city's no longer open to her. As it isn't to the people _someone_ keeps trying to send in from New York unannounced."

The four shadowhunters snickered.

"I hear someone ended up in Egypt," Alec noted.

"I hear someone struggled against being rerouted, so I deposited her gently but firmly in the vaults of a Swiss bank," Allie returned. "Let me know if you ever hear how she ended up explaining her presence there."

Magnus dropped into the armchair as if he owned it and pulled Alec down with him. It was a strange thing to watch. Maia was used to Alec, of all people, showing a lot more restraint in public, but there he was, happily squeezing himself into a narrow space and leaning into Magnus as if trying to soak up as much of the warlock's presence as he could to tide him over whatever his boss would come up with next to limit their time together.

"So do you think Clary's ability to open portals may not be connected to her angel blood at all?" Magnus asked, apparently less interested in the whereabouts of the bounced shadowhunter. "It could just as well be a side effect of her 'wild power'?"

Charlie took a moment to consider before answering. "I don't think so. Gates are something the fey and sorcerers use. And we can close a gate with the right charm, so we could probably open a gate with the right charm. What's this about a wild power?"

Clary snatched a piece of paper from a wall of shelves along one side of the room. No one seemed to take offence or, for that matter, notice of the fact that she was behaving not so much like a guest, and more like someone who belonged here. Maia was reminded of the welcome they'd gotten on the roof. They'd been gone from New York for only about two weeks. Was it possible to be assimilated into a family that quickly?

Putting the TV's remote on top of the paper, Clary pushed down on it, until it slipped into the page, where it sat, looking like a detailed pencil drawing.

Maia couldn't help but stare. Simon had told her about this, but it was the first time she'd seen it happen.

"I hope you can get that back out," Jack commented drily.

Clary didn't grace him with an answer, but merely lifted up the page, plunged her fingers through the paper and pulled them back until she was holding the remote in one hand and a blank piece of paper in the other. "I've inherited this from my mother," she said. "So we know it's not an angel skill."

"And you didn't think this worth mentioning three weeks ago?" asked the old woman everyone – including the shadowhunters and Magnus Bane – called Auntie Bea.

The red-haired shadowhunter squirmed just a little under her hard look. "I didn't think of it," she admitted. "I haven't really found any use for it yet. It's a lot easier to destroy paper than it is to destroy an object, so while I know my mother did this, I don't think it's a good way to hide things."

"We'll definitely want to borrow you next time we have to organize a move," Allie declared. "What's your limit? Can you use a blank notebook as a moving van?"

Clary stared at her. She seemed a bit uncomfortable with how quickly Allie had thought of a practical application for her skill. "I haven't tried, but I can find out."

Alec leaned forward in his seat, rapping his knuckles on the table to get their attention before anyone could continue that line of thought. "While this is very interesting, I'm not sure how much time we have before Aldertree has someone text or call one or several of us to get us to come back. Was there a reason you wanted us here, other than to tell us about bouncing his people?"

"Which we heartily approve of, by the way," Izzy threw in.

Auntie Bea stepped forward and put an object on the table. It was a small silver rod, of a kind that Maia recognized immediately. Where had the woman gotten her hands on a stele?

"We have made progress with this," she announced.

That was enough to shut everyone up and give her the undivided attention of all the New Yorkers.

"Let's hear it," Alec said when it became clear she was waiting for some reaction beyond that.

"To the best that we have been able to determine," Bea said, striking a lecturer's pose now, "they do, as you suspected, serve to withdraw life energy when applied to a thing that is alive, or has a semblance of being alive."

Allie made a face. "By the second, she means they tried a healing rune on the monkey's paw Grandma used to have in the store, and it rotted and fell apart within minutes."

"Just so," the old woman said with a disapproving air. "Unfortunately, since Alysha is strictly against the acquisition of another artifact of the same kind, we couldn't test it against the application of a charm. But the observation remains."

"But they don't kill us," Jace protested. "Everyone uses them all the time."

"Actually, they do." Auntie Bea said it neutrally, like stating a fact with no more bearing on anyone's lives than the next day's menu. "As far as we can tell, they weaken your hold on this world; they deteriorate your bodies; they break down your life force. They just don't do so as quickly, because there's a lot more life force inside you than there is inside a regular mortal – a mundane, as you call them."

They stared at her.

"They simulate an aging process," the old woman clarified. "How many of your kind live to a truly old age?"

*

Alec swallowed drily. The answer was 'barely anyone'. Shadowhunters expected to die young. Sooner or later, anyone would make a mistake in battle, run afoul of a demon too strong for them, miss a vital shot…

"What about people who leave the shadowhunters?" Clary asked. "Like my mom did."

"That was irregular," Alec told her. "She shouldn't have been able to do that."

"And she continued to use her runes and her stele," Izzy added. "But what about people who are deruned and banished?"

Jace shook his head. "Don't usually survive for any time to speak of before they're tracked down and killed by some downworlder or another. I'm sure there are statistics. Auntie Bea - are you saying that if it wasn't for this… this energy leech, we'd just not age and go on living? Like warlocks?"

The worst thing, Alec thought, was that it made sense. They had angel blood in the same way the warlocks had demon blood. Yes, there were differences, but they'd started to understand that the differences were potentially less than they had always been led to believe.

"Quite possibly," Bea said. "Unfortunately, we don't have an undamaged Nephilim to study."

"But – after ritual, I thought we were kind of like you," Izzy said, looking back and forth between the Gale women. "You age. You die."

"We're of Earth," Bea said, as if that explained everything.

Charlie sighed, realizing that meant nothing to the four of them. "Cycles of life and death are natural for us. It's part of our connection to the world. Everything that is of the Earth lives and procreates and dies, and so do we." She paused. "By choice."

"By _choice_?" Clary blurted out. "You mean, you could just _choose_ not to age and die?"

"Me?" Charlie laughed. "I don't know what I can choose anymore. Some days I'm not sure what I am anymore. Everyone else? They wouldn't. Not even someone like Auntie Catherine would. Freezing your own life cycle – that's something a sorcerer would do."

A sorcerer. A Gale gone bad, hunted down relentlessly by the rest of the family and killed by them, because the Gales cleaned up their loose ends.

"It's what my father did in any case," Jack confirmed.

Allie nodded. "He looked late middle age, not the hundred-ish he actually was. Adjusted his looks to his position – he'd been in Calgary for a while, he had to age up or it would have been noticeable. If we hadn't gotten to him, he probably would have faked his death, shed a few decades and continued as his own heir."

"The point remains," Bea took over, "that we tie ourselves to the land and we tie ourselves to the circle of birth and death because Earth is where our power comes from. This is how we work. You are of Air. Air just is."

Alec had caught the light shining in Magnus' eyes a moment before he had realized what Auntie Bea was saying: that they could have had an eternity together if someone hadn't, in the past, decided that their life span needed to be limited.

He suddenly felt an icy cold. "We were created as weapons," he said, remembering the purpose behind the appearance of the first shadowhunters. "Human-shaped, thinking, talking weapons. And we were set up to self-destruct."

Magnus moved closer, as if he could somehow shield Alec from the realization that was presently burning itself into his mind with a searing heat and blistering cold feeling at the same time. The warm tracks his breath left on Alec's skin were the only thing that felt real for a moment.

"Weapons can be repaired when broken," Jace said pragmatically. "Can we?"

To Alec's surprise, Auntie Bea nodded. "We think so. It's guesswork, though. Gwen and Peggi consulted with our brewers back in Ontario and stated cooking up a potion that they think may do the trick."

Gwen had been busy in the kitchen, cleaning up after the meal together with her husband, the resident leprechaun. She walked over to them now, summoned by the sound of her name.

"We have no knowledge of what the long-term side effects may be. If you try it, it's at your own risk."

Clary frowned at her words. "What about short-term side effects?"

The older woman shrugged. "I didn't experience any."

That had everyone stare at her in some alarm.

"What?" she asked, pushing back her sleeve to reveal a small iratze burned into her skin. "We had to try it out on someone, and I wasn't going to let Peggi be the one. She has kids, you know."

"You shouldn't have--!" Alec started, realizing while he was speaking that it was too late for that anyway.

Bea cut him off with a quick motion of her hand. "She wasn't going to be deterred by us, she wouldn't have listened to you either. At least we know it works after a single application of that thing." She gestured towards the stele.

"We've had a lot more than a single application," Izzy noted, looking down her front and apparently trying to guess at how often she'd applied a stele to her skin – either to burn in a rune or to activate it.

"You may need more than one draught of the potion to stop or reverse the effect," Gwen said. "But remember, this is still very much in the trial stage. We have no data on how extended exposure differs from a one-time application… There's a certain risk."

"I'll take it," Izzy and Alec said at the same time, Clary and Jace following just a fraction of a second later. They exchanged a look.

"I'll take it," Alec repeated. He was their leader. It was only right that he would take the risk. "If it's working out, you can do it and know you're safe."

Jace shook his head decisively. "We'll all take it. Then we'll have a pool to monitor. That'll tell us more than if it's just you." What he wasn't saying, though Alec realized it perfectly well, was that he wasn't going to let him bear the risk alone.

Simon and Maia were looking mostly confused. They'd have to explain the details to them before they went back. Clary was summarizing already, though, and Alec turned back to face Gwen.

"The potion, Auntie Gwen. Do you have any of it ready?"

With a nod, she turned and returned to the kitchen, collecting a dark bottle from the fridge. So she'd guessed that they were going to want it.

"Doesn't that mean you won't be able to use your steles again, ever?" Simon asked, loud enough to be heard by everyone.

"We haven't been using steles on ourselves since we came back two weeks ago," Alec told him curtly. "We weren't going to do that anyway."

"But people will notice."

Clary pulled out two silver rods and put them on the table. "One's real, one's a glamored marker pen. Which is which?"

Simon squinted at them, as if he could see through the glamor if he stared hard enough. That would have been disconcerting. They'd ended up using the best combination of shadowhunter glamor and Gale glamor to give the small implement its new appearance. Even the four of them sometimes had stop and think to remember which one they were holding.

He pointed at one eventually, and Clary took the other and deactivated the glamor on it.

"They'll notice when you're not using your runes," Maia pointed out. "That marker stele looks good, but it won't actually turn anything on, right?"

"Lucky thing we found out we can use _charms_ ," Jace said, pointing at the various Gales around them, all sporting the same marks they did, but in a shiny, barely-there form. "Until we're ready to share this knowledge, no one needs to know that some of the runes we wear are actually just glamors, too."

He picked up Clary's marker, uncapping it and drawing a Heat rune on the piece of paper she had used earlier to demonstrate her special skill.

"Don't set the house on fire," Allie cautioned.

Jack snorted a plume of smoke. "As if anything in here wasn't fireproofed."

Jace dropped the page in the middle of the fireproof charm that was, indeed, placed on the table's surface, probably to protect the furniture from the hotter outbursts of Jack's amusement.

"Does that mean we can also…" Simon scribbled in the air with one finger, "and make things go up in flames?"

They shared another look. Could a vampire use charms? Could a werewolf?

Charlie shoved more paper in Simon and Maia's direction. "Try," she suggested, quickly drawing them a template for the Heat rune.

No intent equaled no effect. Alec couldn't see the slightest bit of power flow as she completed the design, although he had his power vision turned up to the fullest.

Gwen, apparently also curious about the results, was waiting, holding a tray with four potion cups.

Magnus caught her eye and, disentangling himself from Alec, stood to take her aside, asking something in a whisper. Alec didn't need to turn on his Hearing rune to guess he was inquiring about the contents and the properties of the potion before he'd let it pass any of their lips.

Simon copied out the design, his face crunched in concentration.

The result looked a bit skewed, but that wasn't the reason he got no reaction. The vampire did not have the talent of tapping into the arcane power the world around him held. His charm lacked fuel to work with.

It was exactly the same for Maia.

"So what happens if one of you puts them on us?" Simon wanted to know once they had determined that.

Alec made a face. "Why would we? You're a vampire and a werewolf. You already come with most of the improvements we use the runes for!"

"But imagine if Maia wants to be invisible! Or maybe I'd like some extra dexterity. Or—"

Clary interrupted him. "Simon, they work on mundanes, on leprechauns, on seelie… I'll draw a dexterity on you if it makes you happy. Though speaking of 'drawing'…" She pulled out the pages she had copied from the Gray Book so far. "Can someone give these to Uncle Tomas? That's as far as we got with the missing runes."

Allie took the paper from her and glanced at the pages before depositing them on top of the shelves. "Beautiful work," she commented. "Dad will love these."

 


	3. Chapter 3

3.

_November 14 th, 2016; later_

Magnus stood on his balcony, looking over towards where the Institute stood, though of course it was much too far from where he was to actually see it.

Alec was somewhere in the space between the two buildings now, making his way back together with his friends so they would keep Aldertree's curfew.

He hated that. He wanted to fall asleep next to Alec and wake up in the same way the next morning, wrapped in satin sheets and shadowhunter.

Clary had offered to portal Alec out and back secretly, but they'd had to decline. Her portals shattered, rather than disappearing, after use, and portal shards showed a reflection of the location the portal had been used for. There was too much of a risk that some of the portal shards would make it into the wrong hands, especially if there were going to be many of them.

Tonight, however, it was just as well that Alec couldn't stay.  Magnus had plans, and he was sure Alec would have wanted to come along with him if he had been at hand to see him prepare to leave.

There were some things in the Downworld that were better done without a shadowhunter accompanying you, though.

Checking his pockets surreptitiously to make sure he had everything he thought he might need, Magnus threw open a portal and stepped through.

*

He came out in a mountain forest, in a part of the world several hours behind New York. At home, it had been night already. Here, it was only mid-afternoon, and while winter had the mountains almost in its grip, he could still hear the odd bird sing in the canopy.

The forest had quieted only for a moment at his arrival. With the birdsong came other sounds: the noise made by a squirrel racing up a tree nearby, the scrabbling of small creatures through fallen leaves, and the lesser fluttering of other birds coming down to pick fresh food out of the forest floor.

Magnus turned and, with long, determined steps, walked towards his destination.

He had aimed well: The clearing that held the cottage he was looking for was just barely out of sight of his landing spot.

As he stepped through the wards, the cottage became a larger building, reminiscent of a mountain chalet rather than the humble abode it had been a moment ago.

The woman who came to meet him by the door before he could as much as knock had strands of glossy black feathers mixed in with her hair. Today she wasn't even making a token effort at taming them with a tie.

"Magnus Bane," she acknowledged his presence. "What brings you?"

She seemed surprised that he had shown up here, but rather in the way in which one was surprised to see an unexpected visitor in general, and not the specific way of surprise warranted by a visitor who was unexpected because one had just left him behind to die a few weeks ago, with every right to expect that he would not escape that particular unpleasant fate.

Either she was a better actress than he had given her credit for, or his best guess at the warlock mixed in with their recent misfortune had been wrong.

"Ariana," he said evenly. "May I come in? We need to talk."

She stepped aside, clearing the way for him to enter, and led him into a small but elaborately furnished sitting room, where she indicated a padded chair.

A wave of her hand brought a plate of cookies and two cups of freshly brewed tea to the table before it, and Magnus wondered fleetingly if she had had those somewhere in the house, or if she had just caused a lot of confusion about who had stolen the pastry in some mundane household nearby.

Well, he wasn't a stranger to summoning things, though he rather prided himself in stealing right from the stores. It was easier to put things back there without being accidentally observed. And anything that wasn't consumable had to be put back, or else his apartment would end up cluttered up too badly to move around in. He liked to refurnish now and then.

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" Ariana asked, gracefully lowering herself into the seat across from the one Magnus still stood beside.

"Not long ago," Magnus began, sitting down and crossing his legs, settling comfortably but making sure he kept his hands where he could quickly shape a spell if he had to, "I had a little run-in with a warlock. Their associates jumped me, and I came to with a curse lodged inside me." He tapped the area above his heart with two fingers. "Don't bother. It's gone now. The last of it dissipated two days ago. I'm looking for the warlock who did it."

He could see it in her face when she realized why that brought him to her doorstep, of all the places he could have come.

"You think it was me?"

She sounded taken aback. Not shocked so much as utterly perplexed.

Fishing a few sheets of paper from his shirt pocket, he placed them on the table between them.

They were printouts, the quality suggesting that someone had cut sections out of larger photographs and enlarged them. They showed parts of arcane designs, some painted with chalk on grass, others charred into the ground.

The last one was a hand-drawn representation of a full circle, made up entirely of sigils and runes.

Some of them were shadowhunter runes. Some of them were sigils he knew from warlock spells. Some of them had been entirely unknown to all of them, though their hosts in Calgary had been able to read them. He had reason to expect Ariana to recognize them.

She tapped one of the enlarged sections with a thoughtful finger, tracing the outlines.

"I can see why you're coming to someone specializing in wards," she said. She touched another shape. "And someone who works for shadowhunters. Now, even though I work for them, I don’t like them any better than the next warlock—"

Her eyes narrowed as Magnus cleared his throat reproachfully.

"What?"

"Some shadowhunters are alright," Magnus said. "I'm going to marry one."

There was an odd expression on her face as various responses tried to push through to take control. "Congratulations," she finally said.

"I haven't actually asked him yet," Magnus admitted. "But yes, there were shadowhunters involved in this. I saw one."

Now her expression was definitely a smirk. "Does your not-yet-fiancé know about this?"

"He knows enough." He wasn't going to give her details, just in case she was involved after all – which by now he sincerely doubted. That wasn't because of anything she'd said. It was in the way she was studying those marks in the circle, with the curiosity of someone who had just seen an interesting new piece of information that coincided with her area of expertise.

She picked up two of the sections and turned them around to face Magnus. They showed the same combination of signs, once in chalk, once in burnt lines. "What is this?" she asked. "I am sure I've never seen these before."

He studied her face, trying to spot the lie.

Leaning forward, he placed one finger on the paper, circling a subset.

"Rerouting sight."

Then another.

"Rerouting people."

She blinked. "When you say rerouting…"

"I mean that those circles and their contents were invisible to mundane eyes and anyone who stepped into them on one side stepped out of them on the other immediately. They're pockets in space. Does that remind you of anything, Ariana?"

It was clear from her reaction that it did.

"Do you know for how long both shadowhunters and warlocks have studied the wards around Idris without figuring out how they worked?" Ariana asked him, her voice incredulous. "And you come here and just deliver the _designs_?"

That was unexpected. He had come planning for many situations, but not one in which the person who was in charge of maintaining the wards around that little country was unfamiliar with the runes he brought. He'd just assumed they were passed on with the position, possibly with an oath of secrecy.

"So what is your job with the wards if you don't know how they work?"

Clearly making an effort not to reach for the pictures Magnus still had his hands on, she leaned back and picked up her cup. "The other part of the wards. The ones that were added later, mostly to alert Alicante when someone crosses the border to make it impossible to sneak in. Warding the mountain passes to keep them open even in winter. Magnus—"

She paused, and he waited for her to continue on her own.

"Whatever size you thought your problem was with whoever made these wards: it's bigger."

He'd started to fear as much, but he said nothing, merely indicating for her to continue.

The cup went back on the table and she leaned forward again to point at the circle drawing. "Shadowhunter marks. Warlock marks. _Angel Marks._ You're up against one of them."

"Not necessarily," Magnus said quickly. "The people I was staying with knew these marks, and they were definitely no angels." He raised one hand, forestalling the objection that was clearly building on her tongue. "Definitely no angels," he repeated. "Without the least doubt."

She looked back at the pictures, then at him.  "Then one of them could have been involved."

No, they couldn't have. "I would vouch for every single one of them." What about one of those people they called sorcerers, though? Members of their family who had taken a dark path… they were hunting and killing them when they appeared, and they were rare. But it took only one of them slipping through the nets. He'd have to warn Allie, just in case.

If Ariana had been about to reply to his statement, she reconsidered before the first word left her mouth. Instead, she sighed.

"I'm probably going to regret this because I'm sending you after some innocent kid who doesn't have three spells to his name and was just being curious, but I may have an idea of which warlock you can try next."

Her hand went up next to her head, where she snapped her fingers, magic already playing around them. The next instant, she was holding a photograph – a memory given physical shape. She passed it to him.

"He came visiting me not quite a month ago. Said his name was Walter. He was asking about the wards. Refused to believe me when I told him I didn't know them. First he asked, then he begged, then he threatened, then I sent him on his way with a boot to his backside and he slunk away. It's the only lead I can give you."

Magnus took the picture and glanced at it. It showed a man who looked to be in his late teens – not an unusual age for a warlock to be frozen in. He had dark blue eyes and a head of unruly brown hair that stood every which way but wasn't quite enough to conceal the pair of dog ears perched on his head. He pocketed it, and the drawing of the circle, and stood. "Thank you, Ariana. I appreciate your help."

His tone made it clear that she wasn't going to enjoy the results if it turned out she'd lied to him.

If she'd told the truth, however, she should have a little something for her efforts.

He left, leaving the enlarged circle sections showing the warding runes lying there beside the cup of tea he hadn't touched.

 

 

_November 15 th, 2016_

Someone hammering on his door tore Alec from a deep sleep.

"Demon attack downtown!" he heard a voice shout. "You've got ten minutes to get ready. Aldertree wants you to help out with this."

That brought him awake instantly.

"Wake up Clary, Jace and Izzy!" He yelled back. "I'm on my way!"

Within moments, he was out of bed and jumping into yesterday's jeans. If it was that urgent, there wasn't going to be time for anything but getting dressed.

Running a hand over his cheek and feeling stubble, he wished he could have gotten away with putting on the shaving charm Jack had shown him during their stay in Calgary. But there wasn't time to shave, and he didn't want to risk anyone noticing.

Certainly not if someone – such as Aldertree and his people – would be looking for something out of the ordinary.

As much as he appreciated being sent back into the field: if anyone expected him to believe that this unexpected mission happening the night after they had spent most of the day untrackable, after losing their tails, was coincidence, they'd have a lot of convincing to do.

He slipped one variation of his stele into its holster and the other into the deep pocket in his jacket. That wasn't going to stand out. Many people routinely carried a spare stele on missions.

His phone went into another pocket, and his dagger – the only weapon he could sensibly get away with taking to his room – into its sheath.

Izzy stepped out of her room as he passed it, dressed all in close-fitting leather and the electrum whip clasped to her arm in its bracelet shape.

Alec didn't need to turn around to know that the footfalls jogging down the hallway belonged to Clary and Jace.

"I should be happier about this than I am," Izzy told her brother as she fell into step beside him.

"Tell me about it." The other two slowed down to match the Lightwood siblings' pace. "Do we expect them to try something before or after we deal with the demon?"

"Before, during and after," Alec told Jace. Unfortunately, that wasn't a joke.

They reached the ops center to collect further instructions with almost four minutes to spare, but still as the last to arrive. Aldertree was waiting for them – and so were a number of other shadowhunters.

"While I personally would have liked to give you more of a break," Aldertree told them as they came in, "I'm informed it doesn't do to hold back resources, even if one's only partly trained and all four of them are still recovering from a failed mission."

Great. By putting that statement on record, Aldertree had just declined responsibility for anything that was going to happen in the next hours. If anything untoward occurred while they were out, he could always claim he'd known they weren't ready to be back in the field.

"A demon nest was found here," Aldertree marked the point on the three-dimensional map he had pulled up. "Activity has spiked in the last hour. This must be taken care of quickly. Suzan will lead the mission."

All eyes turned to the woman standing at the very front of the group, who now stepped up to join Aldertree by the map. So she'd somehow made it back from Switzerland.

"Evidence suggests that this is a hive, rather than a simple nest," she explained. "So we must get at the queen. If we let it get away, it'll just start a new one elsewhere. It's probably somewhere in this part of the sewers here." She enlarged a section of the map, circling the spot with a gesture. We'll approach it like this…"

She proceeded to lay out her plan, which sounded solid enough for something that had to have been put together in the last half hour or so. Finding out that their own task was going to be covering a section of side tunnels that were unlikely to contain much activity would have been more disappointing if it hadn't been expected. They'd be out of the main action – and also out of most people's sight for most of the time.

Alec hated the way he was thinking. He didn't want to consider any of his fellow shadowhunters a potential enemy who might jump them from behind given half a chance, but right now, he couldn't help it. It scared him how easily that mindset came to him. It should have been harder to imagine any such thing happening at all.

He'd mentioned that to Magnus, a few days ago, half-expecting him to laugh and shrug it off.

He hadn't.

Instead, Magnus had gone very serious and suggested that maybe that meant that he had, at least unconsciously, known for a long time that some things were anything but alright in the Institute.

Alec didn't want that to be the case, but he realized fully well that what he wanted often wasn't what he got.

"Get your weapons!" Suzan concluded her instructions, and everyone crowded out and towards the armory, where two sleepy-looking young shadowhunters sped things up by handing them their things. They managed to look almost envious in spite of seeming about ready to drop back into bed.

Of course. Being woken to go on a mission was exciting. Being woken merely in order to assist with the logistics was frustrating.

Alec accepted his bow and quiver with a nod of thanks and stood aside to quickly give his weapon a run-over, until someone pushed him rudely forward. "Move, Lightwood. You're keeping us up."

"What's wrong with _him_?" Alec asked vaguely in Jace's direction, but he slid into the strap of his quiver and moved, joining the others leaving the Institute.

*

They'd separated upon arrival, splitting up into their predetermined groups to approach what they suspected to be the queen's main chamber from different directions and cutting off any escape route at the same time.

Though they didn't expect a lot of activity in the segment of maintenance tunnels they were covering, the four of them didn't let their guard down.

They thought they could hear battle sounds dully echoing over when they passed junctions. Much as they hated it, they resisted the urge to dive down those tunnels and join in the fray. They weren't going to give anyone reason to complain about their conduct.

Once, a demon came scuttling through one of the connections, apparently having gotten away from the skirmish going on at the other end.

Jace's sword dispatched of it quickly, before it could even raise its stinger high enough to shoot any of its venom bolts.

The creature disintegrated, as Jace shook his head in the direction of the tunnel. "Sloppy," he noted, to no one in particular.

It was the only demon they encountered as they progressed.

Alec could feel the tension increase. They had expected that there would be little activity in their section. They hadn't expected there to be none.

Eventually, they thought they found an explanation for that that almost made them laugh in relief as they came up against a thick, heavy door blocking the tunnel. It looked new enough to not appear in the map they used at the Institute for good reason, and sturdy enough to keep out any demons that didn't possess enough intelligence to steal a key and open a door lock, or the strength to simply break it down.

"After you," Jace said with a half-bow in Alec's direction, letting him as their leader burn an opening rune into the door so they could swing it open.

*

The door opened, and their training took over, leaving little space for deliberate thinking.

They had expected another piece of tunnel, deserted like the rest.

They entered a room that had once been used to store equipment of some kind. Now it was mostly filled with a writhing mass of tentacles, radiating out from a central core.

What was left of the floor and walls was taken up by pods wrapped in fibers reminiscent of cotton candy that appeared to stick them to whatever surface was available.

It took Alec only a split second to realize what had happened. They had, whether by accident or design, stumbled into the hive. While everyone else was tied up elsewhere, the four of them were alone where there should have been a party thrice their size: Facing the queen.

Apparently just as surprised as they were by the sudden visitors, but not quite as well trained, the queen took a moment longer to react, which left them with just enough time to fend off the first lashing tentacles shooting their way.

Clary hacked at one, while Izzy's whip cut through another like a knife through warm butter. So at least the queen wasn't resilient to their weapons.

That was just as well, because some of those appendages had already moved far enough to block the door from closing again, effectively preventing any plans of retreating back that way and slamming the door shut until reinforcements arrived.

Alec raised his bow.

"See if you can get it to move those things apart far enough so I can get a clear shot at the core! That's the best chance we have!"

They understood, moving sideways along the walls, hacking and slashing at what they could reach.

It worked, after a fashion, as the queen fanned out tentacles that seemed to have lives of their own, like a mass of squirming worms probing, some crawling across the floor, others shooting out whip-like to collide.  Some of them sported growths like suction cups, trying to attach to something – anything – while others were covered in bristly hairs that left reddened, burning welts where they touched skin.

 Jace vaulted over a thick, fleshy one undulating on the floor. He was, as always, the most reckless of them and the one most quickly where the fighting came with the greatest risk. He was whirling around dangerously close to the queen now, his blades a blur in the air as he cut through anything that tried to get a hold on him.

It did work. A nest of tentacles curled in the vicinity of where the queen's demonic core was located, as far as they knew, started to move, stretching towards the attacker as if trying to grasp him.

Izzy and Clary were still advancing from the other side.

When this was over, Alec thought, he'd have to have a talk with Jace about taking needless risks.

One of the queen's arms finally managed to evade Jace's sword and wrapped around the nephilim's legs. Jace reversed the strike he'd been about to execute and hacked down at it, jerking sideways in the next movement.

More tentacles reached for him, and Alec barely had time to be concerned for Jace's continued well-being, because that finally did the trick and gave him a clear shot at that spot on the queen's body that was their only chance of getting out of this chamber alive: along the upper edge of a slight, irregularly shaped indentation in the skin.

He knew he had a point-blank shot at the core, and he released the arrow, ready to see the queen turn to ashes the moment it struck.

The arrow did strike, and a sudden, near-unbearable stab of pain in his back tore a strangled scream from Alec as it drove him to his knees.

He was already twisting around, trying to spot who had attacked him, when he realized there'd been a second agonized sound mixing in with his own, processed Clary's shocked gasp, followed by a flurry of whirling blades as she tried to cut her way through to Jace, and Izzy, swinging her whip in one hand and drawing a dagger with her other, morphing from providing a distraction for the queen to launching her own attack at its center.

Jace was wrapped in two of the tentacles now, his body hanging strangely limp in their grip. He had managed to hold on to his blades, and was hacking at the queen, no longer artfully drawing it to where he wanted it to move, but fighting for his life – and doing so through the pain shooting through him from the arrow deeply embedded in his back.

Alec felt his _parabatai_ 's grim determination to not go down easily. He felt the echo of every new wave of pain, triggered whenever the tentacles' movements twisted his body this way or that. What kind of idiot had thought it would be a good idea to connect two warriors so that they could feel each other's pain when they were likely to – meant to – be in battle together? That way, when one was injured, the other was at risk of being incapacitated as well by the shared pain, and they would simply both die because neither of them was capable of a decent defense.

The thoughts shot through Alec's head unbidden, as his brain was grasping for straws just so that it wouldn't have to acknowledge what had just happened: He had had a point-blank shot and he had missed it. It hadn't even been a small target. He'd taken much harder shots, and hit perfectly. He hadn't missed a shot like this in a decade.

He hadn't just missed the shot. He had hit Jace instead.

Somehow, he managed to gain his feet again, raising his bow and nocking a new arrow. The only way to help Jace now was to kill the queen, before it strangled him, and Izzy was still fighting her way close enough to the core to sink her dagger in.

Clary's attention was on Jace, not the queen, which was where Alec wanted his attention to be, too, though he knew he couldn't afford that. Not if he didn't want to be the cause for all four of them ending up dead.

Where were the other nephilim? He couldn't even hear the fighting anymore, but that might have had something to do with the roaring of his blood in his ears and the hissing sounds the queen made once the beak-like mouth, also previously concealed under coiled appendages, had been uncovered.

He took aim, and he knew he had a point-blank shot.

He'd known he had a point-blank shot before. He'd _known_ it. He didn't make that kind of mistake. He didn't aim at one place and hit almost two feet to its left. Not at this kind of distance.

The realization struck just in time, and he yanked his arrow back as the bow dropped from fingers that suddenly felt numb from understanding.

Drawing his sword, he surged forward, discarding any concern for his own safety.

His boots slipped in the ichor that had dripped from cut and pierced tentacles, and he just barely managed to balance himself and keep from crashing head-first into a squirming mass that would have been only too happy to squeeze him to death.

Izzy's whip snapped around an arm that reached for him, causing it to recoil.

Then his sister had cleared the obstacles in her way. Her arm drew back, launching the dagger from her hand and at the queen's core.

The blade struck true.

With a scream that sounded as much inside their heads as in their ears, the demon disintegrated, returning to whatever plane it had come from.

Alec gritted his teeth against the pain as Jace dropped, crumpling on the ground, unable to keep himself from hitting the pools of demon ichor that were left behind and would take another short while to vanish. His blades clattered on the hard floor.

Now that the queen was gone, Clary was by his side in an instant, falling to her knees and reaching for his hand. Her other hand moved towards the arrow shaft, hesitating and not quite sure what to do.

Without any thought to the kind of dirt he was getting all over himself, Alec let himself drop on Jace's other side.

"Don't pull it out," he cautioned when he saw where Clary was reaching. "Just break off the shaft. Let the actual medics remove the tip." He surprised himself by how calm his voice sounded.

"What have you done?" A sharp question came from the other side of the chamber, where a door had opened in the last seconds of their battle.

The reinforcements had arrived.

"It was—", Jace gasped in pain and clamped his hand around Alec's as Clary did as instructed, "an accident."

Alec wasn't sure if the moisture on Jace's face was sweat or tears of pain. He knew he himself would be drenched after the kind of acrobatics Jace had displayed earlier, but he also felt like crying.

"We need a medic here!" he called out, demanding the obvious.

Someone gave orders to get one. People moved into the chamber, spreading out and dispatching of the pods.

Jace reached up to dig a hand in the fabric of Alec's shirt as if it was some kind of life-line.

Alec followed the tug, moving closer to his brother.

"The charms," Jace whispered, his voice choked with pain but urgent. "Help me wipe them off. I can't go to the medics with a glamor on."

He had a point. If anyone was going to realize he was wearing one, it would be the medics treating his wound. They might not be able to see what the glamor was, especially since it was merely a representation of Jace himself, rather than someone else's likeness laid over him, but if they as much as suspected that there was a glamor at all, it would lead to questions.

Nodding, Alec wiped his palm over the back of Jace's hand, taking off the charm inscribed there, then repeated the procedure a little farther up his arm where he knew there was an insect-repellent one.

Clary stroked away the charms drawn on Jace's cheek and forehead and the side of his throat, taking the opportunity to shift and carefully lift his head into her lap to reduce his contact with the demonic liquid running across the room in new rivulets that leaked from the freshly destroyed pods.

"Any others?" Alec asked, his hand poised over the glamor charm, which had to be the last one to go if they didn't want anyone to notice.

Jace shook his head slightly, closing his eyes as he rode out another wave of pain. "Take my phone," he reminded Alec, the words barely audible.

Alec's hand slid into his _parabatai's_ pocket, retrieving the Gale phone from there. That was another thing it wasn't wise to let anyone get their hands on.

"How long can it take to get a medic here?" Izzy demanded. She was standing over them as if she thought she'd have to protect the three of them from yet another demon.

It took about twenty minutes.

They were twenty very long minutes, during which Suzan required them to give their first statement on what had happened.

She said little about it, after her first attempt at berating Alec earned her an angry snarl from Jace. Whether she was humoring him because he was wounded, or deferring to his insistence of classifying the situation as an accident because he was a Herondale wasn't quite clear to any of them.

Finally, the medics came rushing in, and Alec found himself pushed rudely to the side, with Clary following only a moment later. The only thing they could do now was to pick up their weapons and return to the Institute.


	4. Chapter 4

Alec had retreated to the Institute's shooting range once Aldertree was done chewing him out for his reckless shooting. He'd taken the reprimand without comment, and kept his head lowered so no one would see him react as the older man went on and on about how he'd known they weren't ready to go on a mission again, how none of this would have happened if he had put his foot down harder on his decision to keep them out of the field for the time being.

Magnus was right. He was a bad liar, and he found it too hard not to carry his heart on his face. The only reason he'd gotten away with telling their story about the first mission gone awry was that Aldertree had a very high stake in not having the truth of the matter come out.

So he had kept his eyes fixed on the tips of his boots, his expression concealed from sight as well as he could, and nodded mutely when Aldertree had dismissed him.

He'd come to the shooting range after that, loosing arrow after arrow from the bow he hadn't put out of his hands once since he had picked it back up from where it had fallen in the hive chamber.

No one wondered at his choice of retreat. He'd been by the infirmary, briefly, and been told there was no point in him hovering there while the medics were taking care of Jace. He'd be informed when they were done.

They had sounded as if they'd be just as happy if they'd never have to see his face there again.

The arrow wound was beyond an ordinary medic's skill – Alec had feared as much just from the echo he was feeling.

No warlock had been called in to help with the treatment – Aldertree's ban against Downworlders in the Institute was to be upheld.

In another situation, Alec would have tried to find a way around it, to get Magnus there to help out as he had in the past – but his arrows were tipped with adamas, and warlock magic was helpless against adamas wounds. That was part of the point of using the material on their weapons: it prevented demonic healing powers from working. Since the warlocks' magic was demonic in nature, they, too, were ineffective in that case.

He'd gathered, though, from talk he had overheard, that the Silent Brothers had been called in to help.

He'd left, rather than allowing anyone to call him a distraction or go on about how he should or shouldn't feel about having put his _parabatai_ in the situation of needing a Silent Brother to hopefully heal his wound.

He had stopped shooting arrows at the targets and was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room, thinking. Izzy and Clary had still been waiting their turn to answer Aldertree's questions when he'd been dismissed, but he assumed either of them could find him easily enough if they needed him.

That assumption turned out to be correct when, just a few minutes later, his sister walked into the shooting range, standing just inside the doorway and looking around.

Alec rose to his feet, waving her further into the room.

"Alec." She came over to pull him into a quick hug. "Are you alright?"

His lips twitched into a wry smile. "As much as I can be, given the circumstances."

"It wasn't your fault," Izzy told him, her face so close to his that their heads were almost touching. She hadn't let go of him entirely yet. "You know that, right? Jace knows that, too."

"Yes," Alec told her. "I know."

He could see the surprise in her eyes. She'd probably come in here expecting any number of reactions from him, possibly anything from flat-out denial of her words to a superficial agreement mixed with silent self-recrimination. She hadn't expected him to simply agree with her – and mean it.

Pulling out of her grip, he picked the bow up from where he had placed it on the floor by his side. "Come here." He let Izzy take position opposite the targets, closer than the distance he used for practice, but not so close that it would be an insult to her skills. Izzy's favorite weapon was the whip, but like everyone she had at least basic training with all the major weapon classes.

He put the bow in her hands and offered her an arrow. "Shoot."

She didn't ask him why. She merely took position, aimed, and shot. Normally, she wouldn't have stood a chance shooting with a bow adjusted to her brother's strength, but this wasn't an ordinary bow, spelled to adjust to the user.

The arrow went wide, clattering loudly on the floor behind the targets.

He handed her another one. "Again."

She took more time to aim this time. The result didn't change.

"I know the bow isn't usually your weapon of choice," Alec said. "But do you always shoot this badly?"

Izzy shook her head. "Certainly not! At this distance, I shouldn't be able to miss the target."

"Since you're not Graham, you're technically able to miss," Alec pointed out. "But you're right. The only explanation I have for this is that someone meddled with my bow between the time I put it away yesterday and the time we got our weapons this morning."

"You mean someone _meant_ for this to happen?" Izzy sounded shocked at the thought, but she bounced back immediately. "No – they couldn't have planned this specifically. But any number of things could have happened with your bow not working right. Even in the best case, we would have been down a strategically important weapon."

Alec took his bow back from her. "I'll lock this away with my own things. Maybe Magnus knows some spell to scry or something and see who did it. I don't expect that anyone other than the three of you would believe me if I don't have any more evidence than a misadjusted bow."

"Mom would believe you," Izzy said.

"Mom needs to be kept out of this. Now more than ever."

Alec winced, and his hand went to where his _parabatai_ rune was. "Jace is awake. Let's go and see what he says."

*

Jace barely glanced their way when they entered.

Alec gulped, shoving away memories of the last time he'd come to visit a family member in an infirmary room like this. That had been when Max had been injured by Jonathan Morgenstern. There had been medics all over the place – but Max's injury had been live-threatening.

Jace was alone, laid out perfectly flat on the room's single bed. There were runes inscribed along its edges, partly covered by the blanket someone had draped over him, but an endless repetition of the same signs where they were exposed. They kept him from moving in any direction that would aggravate his injury.

A side table held a glass of water, easily within his reach and complete with a straw so he'd be able to drink without spilling the contents on himself.

The screen behind the head-end of the bed showed a scan of his spine, the damage marked clearly.

Alec winced when he saw it. He didn't know more than the basics of medicine, but that didn't look good to him.

Clary wasn't there, which probably suggested that she was still being interrogated by Aldertree.

"Jace," Alec said as he approached the bed. "How—"

At the sound of Alec's voice, Jace turned his head to fix his _parabatai_ with a stare that was nothing short of murderous.

"How dare you, Alec?" he snarled, his face contorted into a mask of raw anger. The vehemence of his words stopped Alec in his tracks. "How dare you just come in here like that? Do you enjoy seeing me like this? Do you realize what you've done?"

"Jace, I didn't—" There was something off. Back in the hive chamber, it had been Jace who had insisted the incident be put down as an accident. Although he'd spent most of the time since then knocked out, he'd probably had enough time to think about what had happened and for his feelings to shift. And still…

"I don't care what you did!" Jace yelled at him. "You've always been jealous because I was the better fighter! Is that what you did? Removed competition?"

Alec blanched. That simply wasn't true. He was still searching for words when Izzy stepped in.

"Jace, it wasn't Alec's fault. His bow—"

The last words were drowned out as Jace turned on her. "He shot me in the back, Iz. He crippled me, and they say it's probably forever!"

Suddenly, Alec realized what it was that didn't add up. If Jace was as angry as he seemed, he should have felt the echo through their bond.

He didn't.

The bond wasn't blocked. It was open and clear, and Jace wasn't angry there. That was why the first onslaught of Jace's fury had caught him completely by surprise and almost sent him stumbling back a step.

He glanced at Izzy, who was starting to look desperate, then back at Jace. The fingers of his left hand were twitching on the blanket, barely visible signs of direction as they might use them in combat if they couldn't make a noise.

Alec stepped sideways, moving as indicated. He'd originally been aimed for Jace's side, but the instructions brought him almost to the foot end of the bed. "Jace - I swear to you I didn't mean for this to happen! It was a freak accident."

"I'll show you a freak accident, Alec!"

For a split second, Alec thought he saw Jace's Accuracy and Strength runes light up through the infirmary shirt he was wearing, just as he grabbed the glass of water with his right hand and hurled it at Alec's head with all the rune-amplified power he could muster.

It took every ounce of self-control he had not to flinch.

The makeshift missile crashed into the wall behind Alec. The sound of breaking glass was accompanied by something else as it shattered against the small object perched up by the ceiling. Shards of wet glass and pieces of camera rained to the floor.

"Sorry, Alec," Jace said, the anger gone from his face and his voice now. He held out his hand towards the other man.

"Nothing to be sorry for," Alec said. "I was being slow." Moving to take Jace's hand, he suddenly found himself pulled very close.

"Not much time." Jace's words were barely above a whisper, but fast and urgent. "They want to portal me to Alicante in a few hours. As soon as they can get a portal." He shook his head as he saw Alec open his mouth to answer. "Let me talk. You need to find a way to come along. If they have me in Alicante with no one else around, I'll end up in another freak accident. Don't leave me alone, Alec."

Alec nodded as he gave Jace's shoulder a reassuring squeeze with his free hand. "We'll find a way. They--"

At the sound of the door opening, Jace's angry expression was back. His left hand shot up to dig into Alec's shirt, forcefully enough to turn his knuckles white. The hand on Alec's wrist tightened to where Alec thought it might leave a bruise.

"Damn you, Alec! You should have known better!"

"Alec, you need to leave." Two of the medics had come into the room. The larger one of them took hold of Alec's upper arm and pulled him away from the bed.

The sound of tearing fabric made clear that Jace had refused to let go. He continued to yell after them while Alec and Izzy were escorted outside.

*

"Is it true what he said?" Alec asked the medic who was pushing him towards the door that led out of the infirmary. "Is his injury permanent?"

The man glared at Alec. "I don't think you're cleared for medical information on a patient."

Alec held his eyes. "He's family. He's my _parabatai_. Do you have a _parabatai_? Do you know what that means?" He made an effort to calm himself by taking a deep breath before he said something entirely inappropriate. "I need to know."

There was a snort from the medic. "You should have thought about that before you shot your _parabatai_ in the back. Your arrow had an adamas tip, so warlock magic won't do anything about that wound, and then you let him lie in demon ichor so it could contaminate the wound and disturb our healing runes. What do you _think_?"

"I think," Izzy stepped in, "that that response was not called for. Come, Alec. We need to find Clary."

*

They ran into Clary in the corridors not far from the infirmary.

"Aldertree should try for a job with the Spanish Inquisition," she groaned when she saw them. "How's Jace doing?"

"Absolutely charming," Alec said under his breath, hoping that it was low enough that only Clary would catch it. More loudly, he added: "He threw me out. He blames me for his injury. Clary, I – I swear it was just an accident. I never meant to hit Jace!"

Clary stared at him, probably trying to make sense of what he'd just said.

"You do believe me, Clary, don't you?"

Izzy shook her head almost imperceptibly. It seemed that his sister had had the same thought that had occurred to him as they'd been ushered out into the halls: Jace might only have intended his outburst as an excuse to take out the camera, but they could use it beyond that. The more divided they seemed on their own, the less cause Aldertree would have to try to separate them. Which, he assumed, was part of the reason they were sending Jace back to Idris so quickly.

"Sure, Alec," Clary said, but she didn't look or sound very convincing. "I believe you. Can you let me through now? I need to go see Jace." She started to push past them, close enough so she could give Alec's arm a reassuring squeeze that would hopefully not make it into the camera feed.

Two steps down the corridor, she stopped again, half-turning back to them.

"Also, you're supposed to report to Aldertree again. He had some news about a commotion in the infirmary while he was 'talking' to me." What that, she turned on her heel and hurried away the way they had just come.

*

Aldertree's eyes were icy when Alec entered his office again.

Keeping in mind what he had just learned about Jace's injury, it wasn't hard for Alec to look devastated under that stare.

"Alec," Aldertree said, his voice barely controlled. "You are suspended from duty until further notice. After your little display in the infirmary just now, you're lucky I don't have you and your sister carted off to the City of Bones for trial."

That made him frown. His display in the infirmary? Was he talking about his attempt at getting some information out of the medic? That may not have been wise, but it hardly warranted the City of Bones…

"I don't understand."

"Don't you?" Aldertree asked, though his tone clearly said that Alec had better understand. "When the medics noticed the security feed was broken and went into Mr. Herondale's room, they found you standing over him, threatening him, while your sister stood by and did nothing."

"I didn't threaten him!" Alec protested. "I was trying to get him to understand—"

The older man cut him off. "I don't care about your explanations. I have my reports. Everything that happened today clearly shows that you are not fit to be in the field. In fact, you don't seem to be fit to be in an Institute – which is why you are going to be sent to Idris tonight, to await a full psych evaluation. I should have pressed for that the last time I was head of this Institute."

"No!" Though being portaled to Idris was exactly what Alec had wanted, he didn't think it would do to give up without putting up at least a token resistance. "You can't do that. With the kind of activity New York is getting, you'll need everyone who can hold their own against a demon. You can't just—"

"I can, and I have," Aldertree told him. "Do you think there's anyone here in the Institute now who will want to be on a mission with you?"

"Izzy would."

Aldertree scoffed. "Isabelle is a yin fen addict. She has no place in the field either. She'll be useless as soon as she sees a vampire."

"That isn't true!" Alec shot back. "Besides, it was you who gave her the yin fen to begin with."

"I've told you the last time that you shouldn't make accusations you cannot prove," Aldertree informed him. "Enough now. You will report to the portal at 1800 hours."

Alec stared at Aldertree for another moment, then he let the fight drain out of him. Magnus kept telling him he couldn't lie to save his life, but remembering Jace and imagining the worst  possible outcome of his injury did help him maintain the face he needed.

"Am I under arrest until then, Sir?" he asked, his voice carefully neutral. "If not, I'll go and see Magnus one last time before I leave."

The way Aldertree was shaking his head seemed almost disappointed. "You have to give up on that silly notion that consorting with Downworlders can lead to anything but grief. Maybe if you'd been less distracted by your _warlock_ , none of this would have happened."

Alec bit his lip to keep down his response. Back when the first mission had gone awry, Magnus had been used as bait to lure the four of them into a trap.

"May I go?" he asked as soon as he was sure he had himself sufficiently under control to not bait Aldertree and possibly ruin his chance to be in Idris with Jace. They'd have to take care of the other complications once there – and still find a way to get both Izzy and Clary sent along with them.

A wave of Aldertree's hand dismissed him, and Alec turned and fled the office.

*

Jace woke with a slightly disoriented feeling.

Right. They'd knocked him out after he'd torn Alec's shirt. That move might have been a bit much. He'd have to replace that.

He didn't think he'd dreamed while he'd been out – or at least he didn't remember any dreams. Reality nevertheless came as a bit of a shock upon waking up.

Pain radiated out from the arrow wound in his back, barely reduced by the runes that had been applied – they'd said something about demon ichor getting into it and preventing the angelic marks from taking proper effect.

He couldn't help but wonder if there was another reason for it. Could it be that the potion they'd taken in Calgary, to start reversing the stele damage done to their bodies, was causing a degree of resistance to stele-applied runes? That might be a thought worth pursuing some day. For now, it was purely academic.

The pain wasn't the worst of it. As far as his brain was concerned, right now his body ended not far below his navel. Beyond that, there was – nothing. That absence of feeling, of any kind of awareness of the lower part of his body, was frightening.

Held flat by the runes on the bed, he couldn't even see that unresponsive part of him. He'd run his hand down as far he could reach the first time they'd left him alone, before Alec and Izzy had come in. He resisted the urge to repeat the exercise now. It was all there. He just couldn't feel it because an adamas arrow tip had found its way into his back and severed his spinal cord.

He should have been more desperate at the thought. After that first moment right when the medic had told him that, given the double exposure of his wound to adamas and demon ichor, the outcome to be expected was one of permanent disability, however, something else had kicked in.

There was an ace up his sleeve he wasn't going to mention to anyone for as long as he could avoid it. Actually, there were two aces up his sleeve, and he didn't intend to mention the other one to anyone but Alec, Izzy and Clary.

He wasn't going to assume that his injury was irreversible until and unless he had talked to the Gale Aunties and either Magnus, or Catarina, or both, and they told him that his idea wouldn't work. The warlocks might have been unable to heal an adamas-touched wound, but the Aunties wielded power like a scalpel. Surely they could scrape away whatever adamas residue was blocking warlock magic, so one of those two could heal his back. If they had to magically cut another hole into him for that because the first wound had healed by then, then so be it. That kind of thing would have to wait until he had a chance to get out of Idris in any case.

The other variable he saw was far less technical but would be the one he was going to officially cling to if anyone observed he wasn't feeling sufficiently sorry for himself: Who could say what his angel blood could or couldn't cure, given a little time?

If neither of those two ideas worked – he'd have to deal with that when the time came.

First, they were going to insist on making everything worse by portaling him to Idris. Everyone knew that portaling put a strain on the body, and that exposing a fresh wound to a portal was not the most healthy thing you could do. If his injury wasn't, by strictly Nephilim standards, irreversible now, it surely would be by the time he arrived.

Normally, that they'd even consider such a thing should have told him that they were certain there was no chance of true recovery for him.

Right now, he couldn't help but wonder if they were so adamant about it precisely in order to make sure he wouldn’t bounce back from this.

The low, scraping sound of a page being turned cut through his thoughts, and Jace realized for the first time that he wasn't alone.

He opened his eyes to admit that he was awake, expecting to see Clary.

It was Maryse sitting by his bed.

"Shouldn't you be with Max?"

She started at the sound of his voice, but quickly caught herself and put her book aside.

"Max doesn't need me to be there around the clock," she pointed out. "You're my son, too, Jace."

"Where's Clary?" Jace asked, then, realizing how that sounded, added: "Not that I don't appreciate you being here, Maryse. But – she's not still being grilled by Aldertree, right?"

Maryse shook her head. "She was here until a short while ago, when she got a message and had to leave. She promised she'd be back before they transfer you to Idris." Her smile faltered. "I tried to get that transfer cancelled, but they won't budge on it. They say the risk is far outweighed by the better care you can get there."

Clearly, she didn't agree.

Neither did he, but he nodded. "I understand. Thank you for trying."

The glass he'd broken had been replaced, as a sideways glance told him, by a plastic cup. Clearly they were not going to provide him with any more missiles.

Without thinking about it, Jace tried to raise himself up on one elbow a little, only to encounter the resistance posed by the holding runes. He made a displeased sound. "Why did they even bother with those things if they're going to send me through a portal anyway?"

"Habit?" Maryse suggested. "Jace… about Alec…"

"What about Alec?" His face and voice both were guarded. Surely no one would find it odd if he didn't exhibit the same degree of anger when talking to the woman who had raised them both, no matter the subject.

Maryse took another moment to choose her words. "He's devastated by what happened. Now he's suspended from field duty and to be sent to Idris for evaluation. Aldertree says he tried to attack you in here. The medics reported something to him that he chose to interpret that way."

Jace's eyebrows rose. If Alec had supposedly tried to attack _him_ , then why was Alec the one who had come out of it with a torn shirt? As for the rest of it - That wasn't how he'd imagined Alec would get to Idris with him, but they could untangle that once they were there. "Where's Alec now?"

"Packing and saying goodbye to Magnus."

When Jace didn't respond immediately, she continued: "I can get him if you want to talk to him."

He shook his head. "I can't see Alec now, Maryse." He didn't think he'd be able to keep up the act if he did.

"Jace, if you—"

"Maryse, no," Jace cut her off, his voice as hard as he dared make it. Hopefully, anyone listening in would read it as a refusal to see Alec. Hopefully, Maryse would figure out that her idea of what was going on wasn't accurate. He caught her eyes and held them. "Do you remember what we talked about in the park?"

He could see her features freeze as she did, and gave the tiniest of nods. "Go check on Max, Maryse. I'll be fine."

*

They met at the Jade Wolf, Alec and Magnus arriving together by portal, while Izzy came jogging down the street, shedding her glamor as she approached.

Clary, who had been the first of them on site, came out of the boathouse flanked by Maia and Simon. She pulled Alec into a tight hug.

"We need another plan," she said without preamble. "I don't think I can keep up the hostility for long."

"You won't have to," Alec told her, squeezing back for a moment before he carefully disentangled himself. "Let's go inside."

A few moments later, they were distributed across the boathouse, marking every window and door with charms that would prevent anyone outside from hearing or seeing what was going on inside.

"So Aldertree is sending me to Idris. To be _evaluated_ ," Alec said. "Which I'm not looking forward to, but at least I'll be near Jace."

"And he spread the word about the yin fen," Izzy added, a bitter tone to her voice. "So I'm considered a liability right now and not to go anywhere near a mission."

"That's not fair!" Simon objected. "You're clean! He shouldn't—"

"He doesn't care what he should do," Alec cut him off. "He's the one who got Izzy addicted in the first place."

Izzy flopped on Simon's bed. "On the flip side, Dad got wind of it, called and urgently suggested that I come visit Alicante, where there is neither a yin fen market – or so he says – nor any vampires at hand, so if I can stay there for a few weeks and not turn into a complete wreck from withdrawal, that should prove to everyone that I'm over it, as he put it."

Clary drew a darkening charm on the curtains and a sunlight one on the wall behind them, placing it so that the beam of light it produced was kept contained while the window remained uncovered. Pulling the curtain aside, however, bathed the entire room in a blaze of sunlight.

"Just in case Rafael decides to try anything again," she told Simon, before adding in Izzy's direction: "You're going to take his offer, right?"

Izzy nodded. "I already have. I'm booked on the same portal as Alec tonight. Now all we need to do is find a way for you to come and join us."

"I think I have one." Clary dropped on Simon's desk chair and added a power charm to both the laptops there.

Maia held out her phone. "Can you do this, too?"

Clary drew as she continued: "I thought I'd contact Imogen and tell her I felt I really needed to get some proper training – surely the basics could be learned well in Idris, and my mother told me so much of the place before she died… and I hear there are libraries, and I'm sure it will be great inspiration for my art, too. And, of course, it'd allow me to be close to Jace. She should understand that. I'm just not sure where I'll be staying."

"I'm pretty sure the Fairchilds have a town house that should be yours now," Alec pointed out. He had added a ring of silencing charms around Simon's music corner – an idea Maia seemed about ready to give him another hug for. Simon was a good musician, but Maia was a werewolf, and her hearing was very acute even in human shape. "And you can always stay with Izzy and me. Except you'll have to put up with our father."

His tone made it clear that he didn't like the idea of having to do that himself. Ever since the Lightwood siblings had learned of their father's affair, their relationship had been strained.

He glanced at the time. "Did you forget to text Luke?"

Clary shook her head. "He said he'd be here as soon as he could manage. Simon, is there anything else you wanted? You realize this is our farewell present to you – we don't know how long we'll be in Idris."

Simon glanced around the room. Though he couldn't produce a working charm, he could see them where they were inscribed. "No," he decided. "It looks good. Maybe Charlie can teach me how to get into the Wood with my music, and then I can drop by and visit you in Idris, secretly. Also: That pie? Didn't make me sick at all!" He said the last proudly, as if it had been his achievement, rather than the cook's.

Though the concept of vampire-compatible pies might have been an interesting one on another day, no one paid particular attention to his words. Today, everyone's thoughts were on other things.

They didn't have the time to pursue that now anyway, since Luke chose that moment to make his entrance.

He stopped just inside the door and stared at their assembly.

"I thought I was meeting Clary," he said, looking at each of them in turn. "Does anyone care to fill me in on what's going on?"

"Come in and close the door," Clary said. She vacated the desk chair and offered it to the man who was the closest thing she'd had to a father while growing up. Izzy shifted to make space for her on the bed.

Luke did a second round of taking in everyone present. This time he was frowning. "Where's Jace?"

"The Institute infirmary," Alec said. "For now. He'll be portaled to Alicante later today."

He raised his hand, stopping Luke's question. Then he summarized what had happened: From the time they were sent out to the moment Aldertree had told him he was to report to the portal in a few hours.

Luke listened, shaking his head silently.

"So hopefully Clary can convince Jace's grandmother to let her come to Alicante, and we'll all be there together," Alec finished. "We wanted to let you know before you heard it from anyone else."

"I appreciate that," Luke said. "I don't know what I can do to help you out right now, but I'll make sure everyone keeps their ears open. If anyone brags about having done anything to your bow, Alec, you'll be the first to hear – provided that I can get a message through to Alicante without tipping anyone off."

 "Simon has … a way … of contacting us," Clary said. "At least we think he does."

Simon could text Charlie, and Charlie Gale wasn't easily kept out by any wards. In any case, they hoped she'd be able to get into Idris.

"You think he does?" Luke repeated.

"Well, we haven't actually tried it yet," Clary admitted.

Alec used the small reprieve from telling their story to blink on his power vision. There was something he wanted to know.

He could see the outlines of the charms they had placed all over the room. He could see the faintest traces where their runes were exposed. He saw an even fainter gleam at the core of each of the Nephilim, a tiny spark connecting them to the power they had learned to use. It wasn't enough to qualify as a power signature, as the Gales called it, but it was there. Simon certainly did have a power signature. He looked as if he was shot through with veins that shone like moonlight. Maia and Luke radiated a shine that was similar, yet different: The inherent demonic power that turned people into werewolves.

Power, he mentally corrected himself, since there was no auntie around to do it for him. They'd always insisted that power wasn't by itself angelic or demonic, good or evil. Power just was.

Like Air, apparently.

It took focus to sort through the lights in his vision and turn off the ones he didn't need to see.

Under the werewolf grid laid over her body, Maia was a mundane.

Under his werewolf grid, Luke was Nephilim.

"I don’t think you'll need Simon," Alec stated, realizing only as he did it that he had talked right over Clary.

All eyes turned towards him now.

"Magnus knows all about this, so we haven't technically kept it secret from the Downworld."

After the near-disaster with the Soul Sword before Valentine's death, that was a matter of importance to him. "Maia and Simon know about it, too – the basics at least."

"Does this have anything to do with the glitter-paint runes someone put all over this place?" Luke hazarded a guess.

"They're charms," Clary said.

"They're good charms," Simon added, drawing back the curtain to shoot a ray of sunlight across the room. It cut through between the door and the bed.

Luke blinked, both at the sudden brightness and the concept. A few quick steps took him to where Simon had just dropped the curtain back in place. "May I?" He gestured at the wall.

Simon stepped aside. "Don't wipe it off. I might need it some day."

"So here's what happened when we went missing that time a few weeks ago," Alec began as Luke inspected the charm drawn on the wall, then the one on the curtain.

They took turns telling their story, summarizing as much as they could.

"…and so we know Simon and Maia can't make charms," Izzy ended the last section, too many minutes later. It was almost time for them to leave.

"But Simon and Maia were mundanes before they were turned," Alec said. "You weren't. I think you can just send us a fire message."

 


	5. Chapter 5

_November 16 th, 2016_

Their father was the only one waiting for the Lightwood siblings by the standing portal in Alicante. With six hours separating New York from Idris, Midnight had just passed at their destination.

It seemed like a stupid time to portal in, but Aldertree had probably chosen the first slot he could book on the portal that wouldn't collide with anyone important portaling in or out.

With the Nephilim spread across the globe, it wasn't like Alicante ever truly slept anyway.

Robert Lightwood looked tired, his disappointment in his children barely concealed as he greeted them.

They didn't say much as they left the Gard to walk through the witchlight-lit streets of Alicante.

Robert didn't ask about their side of the story, and they didn't volunteer it. Alec had found that after he had been recalled as Head of the Institute, his father's demeanor towards him had noticeably cooled. They hadn't talked much since, but he had no doubt about it:

The elder Lightwood had expected him to put up more of a fight for his position, and in particular to not disappear on a mission and turn up two weeks later, playing into Aldertree's hands. He had, once, let it slip that he had had to do a lot of fast talking to keep from losing his own position, since his children's actions reflected on the family.

They'd heard that talk before, and Alec had only half-listened after the first few words.

It was strange how things had turned around almost completely. Not too long ago, Maryse had been the demanding parent, Robert the understanding one. Ever since their mother had understood the pain her actions were causing, she'd made every effort to turn her relationship with her children around. They were only too willing to give her the chance.

At the same time, however, Robert had become more distant, focused on politics with an intensity he hadn't let them see before – though it had probably been there all along.

If he saw them as taking Maryse' side in their marital problem, he even was right.

If he felt that Alec had thrown away his efforts at keeping him in the position of the Head of the Institute that first time, when he had blackmailed Inquisitor Herondale for it, he wasn't.

Robert turned as they reached their family's home. "Send a fire message if you need me," he said. "And don't do anything that'll get you into more trouble. Isabelle, you'd be well advised to show yourself in public so everyone can see you're not going into withdrawal."

Izzy nodded. There was no way they could stay out of public anyway.

"You're aware that in the scope of the recent improvements of security around Idris, new wards have been put on the portal area, of course," Robert continued. "They are set to destroy any demonic essences that pass them. So if there is anything in your bags that contains any such essences, it's now been rendered ineffective."

Alec's eyes narrowed. Had their father just implied that Izzy might have tried to smuggle yin fen into the city?

"Why are we discussing this in the street?" he asked, his voice cold and hard as steel. "And what's that with the fire message?"

"I'm not coming inside with you," Robert informed them. "I've been staying with Margaret."

"Your affair," Izzy said, not bothering to keep her tone polite now.

"The woman I love," Robert corrected. "I'd thank you to remember that. I expect that you will treat her politely and respectfully when you meet her. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal clear," Alec said, his voice low. "I shall consider my conduct towards your _affair_ based on how you treat my _sister,_ and the absence of further allegations like the one you just so carefully didn't make."

It might not have been the wisest move to alienate Robert more than he already had, but he wasn't going to back down now. At this moment, there were precisely two people in Idris whom he trusted, and he wasn't going to pretend otherwise – at least not unless one of his friends' life depended on it.

A muscle twitched in Robert's face. "You're not in a position to make demands, Alec."

"I'm not in a position in which I have anything to lose, _Dad_ ," Alec shot back. "Come on, Iz. Let's get settled."

*

"Thanks, I guess," Izzy said when the door fell shut behind them. "For what you said to Dad. It wasn't very smart, but thank you anyway."

Alec shrugged it off. "He was out of line. If we don't stand up for each other, no one will."

He dropped his duffle bag and the hold-all messenger bag he'd gotten from the Gales by the foot of the stairs leading onto the first floor and drew his glamored stele. Izzy had hers out already, placing warding charms on the inside of the entrance door and then concealing them under a glamor. They'd wanted Luke to see the charms they'd left with Simon. They certainly didn't want anyone to see the charms they used to fortify their own home.

They worked in silence. With only the front of the house bordering the street and the rear facing onto a small garden followed by an alley, at least they didn't have a lot of windows to treat. The two long side walls were solid, butting up against the neighboring houses on either side. This wasn't a villa or a manor house – it was just a normal town house, built in a half-timbered structure that spanned three floors, with a vaulted cellar below it.

If they were going to stay for more than a week or two, they'd have to find flyscreens to put in the windows so they could let in fresh air without breaking their protections.

Being able to fix the place up as they pleased was a definite advantage to their father's decision to not reside with them.

Their rooms were as they had last left them. Since most of their belongings were in the Institute in New York, which had been their main place of residence for years, these rooms looked like they belonged to much younger versions of themselves, holding mostly items they'd lost interest in and Max wasn't interested in yet – or at all.

Alec did a quick tour of Jace's old room to put up wards there, too. He was officially a Herondale now and would probably never use this particular bedroom again, even once they officially made up. Surely Imogen would insist that he stay in the much more luxurious Herondale residence.

On the other hand, he didn't see Jace spend an extended amount of time in direct proximity of Inquisitor Herondale without the situation blowing up…

Be that as it may, Alec realized with a sudden stab, all their bedrooms were on the first floor. If that medic hadn't been mistaken…

He pushed the thought aside. Allowing himself to dwell on that would lead to self-recrimination, no matter that he knew it wasn't his fault – no matter that he had figured out what was wrong with his bow and knew that there was no way he could have caught that just in the regular go-over he could give his weapon before an emergency mission like that one had been made out to be. That was, even if no one kept interrupting him while he tried to do that. Some part of him still felt like he should have caught it.

He focused on his bond to Jace instead. The _parabatai_ bond didn't care about distance, and unless one of them was under a ward that stopped the signal or they blocked each other out on purpose, he could have felt his brother just as well from New York as he did from Idris.

Still, knowing they were not separated by an ocean and most of a continent helped.

The bond was wide open, and there was nothing to suggest that Jace harbored any hard feelings towards him. He wouldn't have blamed him if he had, but even knowing that Jace realized how his injury had happened, his calm seemed unusual to Alec.

So maybe the medic had lied to him after all. Or maybe Jace knew something that he hadn't shared yet. Or maybe Jace was actually deeply asleep, and therefore incapable of radiating anger of any kind.

Alec had known the precise moment they had sent his _parabatai_ through the portal by the stab of fresh pain that shot through his back. It was only an echo of what Jace was feeling, and Alec hated every single person who was involved in putting him through that. He'd still felt sore when he himself had gone through the portal. He still felt it now if he focused on it.

*

Back in his own room, Alec started to unpack his things. He hadn't brought much beyond his clothes and a book he'd started to read just a few nights before.

He cleared out space in one of his cabinets and fished the bag that held his disassembled bow from the internally enlarged messenger bag, putting it away and securing the cabinet door with an extra set of charms.

His quilt, glamored to hide its true nature, went on the bed. Clary had promised to bring Jace's whenever she managed to join them.

There was a bit of regret when he took the pie-anchor penny out. They'd texted Allie to ask her not to send any pies while they were in Idris, expecting to be living with their father actually in the same house. Since that wasn't the case, they had just needlessly cut off their own supply of superb and free food deliveries.

His and Jace's phones came out of the bag last. They'd be safe with his bow, he figured. Electronic devices didn't work in Idris, so there was no point in carrying a phone.

To his surprise, his phone greeted him with white digits spelling out the time on the outer display.

He blinked.

The digits remained.

Flipping the phone open, he stared at his screen background, brightly lit. The charge indicator was full, as it invariably was in the Gale phones, and the reception showed all bars.

Electronic devices didn't work in Idris, but clearly his phone hadn't received the memo. It also refused to admit that there were no radio masts anywhere near, and certainly no phone network it could possibly log into.

He swapped phones and saw that Jace's, too, still worked. It showed him a lock screen. That was strange. He'd never noticed that Jace had a lock screen on his phone.

Just to see what would happen, he touched the display, trying to guess at the unlock gesture Jace might have used.

The screen changed, showing him a generic background that he knew wasn't what Jace had on his phone. Jace's background was a portrait of Clary. He pulled up the contact list. It contained numbers for the Nephilim that were supposed to be saved on the phone, as well as Magnus, Luke and Maia. None of the Gales were there.

There were only two explanations that he could think of: One was that this was not the same phone that Jace had gotten from the Gales and been using through the last weeks. That was unlikely, since he had had it on his person ever since he'd taken it at Jace's insistence. The other would have required a lot more intelligence than a prepaid cell phone was supposed to be capable of.

A look at the text messages showed him that only the most innocuous ones they had sent back and forth were there.

He snapped the phone shut and opened it again.

The lock screen was back.

He switched back to his own phone and decided to put the inexplicable reception to the test.

 _Good news. Gale phones work in Idris_ , he typed, and sent the message off to Clary.

 _Arriving 8 AM Idris time. I wants me to stay with her_ , Clary's reply came only seconds later, followed by a second one that read _Jace OK?_

 _AFAIK_ , Alec replied, already on the way to his sister's room.

She opened the door at his knock, and he lifted his phone to show her what he'd just discovered.

"Oh." Izzy said as she stepped aside to let him in. She'd almost finished unpacking her things. Her own quilt was on the bed already, along with assorted objects that waited to be put away. She fished her phone out of her pocket. "Does it really work?"

He nodded. "I just talked to Clary."

"Great! So we just need to give Jace his phone back, and we'll be able to communicate. You brought it with you, right?"

"I did. We can't let anyone see, though. They're not _supposed_ to work." He held his phone out to his sister. "I noticed something else when I had Jace's phone open just now. Can you pretend you want to use mine?"

Izzy's eyebrows went up in an unspoken question, but she took his phone and opened it to a lock screen Alec knew he hadn't set up.

"You need to unlock," she observed.

"Just make something up."

"That's not how it works," Izzy muttered, but she dragged her fingers across the screen anyway. After all, a phone was not supposed to work here to begin with.

The lock screen gave way to the generic phone background. The contact list was down to the Nephilim numbers, Magnus, Luke, Raphael and a few other New York people he had stored. No Gales. The call log was wiped except for those calls that had gone out for purposes even Aldertree and his ilk would consider legitimate, and the text messages saved were all harmless.

"Now give it back."

Closing the phone, Izzy returned it.

When Alec snapped it back open, it opened to the background picture of him and Magnus, a portrait taken in a photo booth. The contact list was complete. So were the log and the text memory.

"That is an interesting safety feature," Izzy noted. "I really want to learn the charms that do that."

*

The sun was just about to peek over the mountains surrounding the city when Alec and Izzy left the house. It was less than twenty minutes to Clary's scheduled arrival, but clearly they couldn't be anywhere near the Gard then. They couldn't let anyone get the impression that they'd known their friend was about to come and join them in Alicante.

Their path took them to Alicante's hospital, a place run mostly by Silent Brothers, where those wounded too badly for Institute care were nursed back to health, provided that they could be stabilized enough to be portaled in. Otherwise, the Silent Brothers went to them in whatever Institute they were.

"We've come to see Jace Herondale," Alec told the young woman behind the reception desk. She wore the garments of a medic in training and didn't seem particularly happy to be placed on administrative duty this morning.

"And you are…?" She asked.

"Alexander and Isabel Lightwood," he said, adding silently: His brother and sister. His _parabatai._

She shook her head. "Sorry. We have strict orders not to let you to him." She didn't sound sorry in the least.

"It's important."

"I'm sure it is. But it'll have to wait. You're not an approved visitor." With that, she turned back to the file she had been sorting.

When they didn't move, she glanced up once more. "You can leave on your own or I can call security." She sounded as if it really wouldn't make any difference to her either way.

"Dammit." Alec resisted the urge to slam his fist into the wall on his way out.

*

They walked in silence until they reached one of the canals, where they stopped, leaning on the railing of the bridge crossing it side by side and staring out into the water.

"We need to give his phone to Clary," Alec said after a few minutes of silence had passed between them. "They won't keep her away from him, right?"

"Let's hope not," Izzy replied. A moment later, she punched Alec's upper arm with her fist. "But we might not even have to!"

Alec turned to look at her, confusion clear on his face.

"Remember what these phones do?" Izzy asked. _"They come back to their owners if lost._ Give me his phone! _"_

Of course! Now that she'd said it, it seemed so logical that Alec couldn't resist the urge to slap the heel of his palm against his forehead at his own slowness. In his defense, he thought, they really hadn't had that much time to get used to the boomerang phones.

He relinquished Jace's phone to Izzy, who put it down by the side of the street.

"Now run to Jace, little phone," she told it, as if it could actually hear and understand her. "Hurry, but be careful. No one other than Jace can see that you are working here."

The white digits blinked out.

"They're starting to frighten me a little," Alec admitted.

"They're auntie-made," Izzy said. "I think they're supposed to frighten you."

*

Clary stepped out of the portal and looked around. The room the standing portal was in was undecorated, furnished only with a few comfortable chairs, presumably for people waiting for an arrival.

Imogen Herondale preferred to stand.

"Welcome, Clary," she said, her voice far from cordial, and yet warmer than she'd ever heard it sound addressed to her before.

"Thank you, Imogen." Clary adjusted the strap of her duffle bag over her shoulder. "And thank you again for letting me come, too. I really appreciate that I'm able to be close to Jace."

There was no point in pretending that that wasn't her main reason for wanting to come to Alicante. No one would have believed her that training was more important to her than the man she loved.

"I'm sure it will do him good to have you," Imogen replied.

"How is he?"

The older woman gestured towards the door and started walking. When Clary fell into step beside her, she said: "Subdued, unsurprisingly. I saw him only briefly last night. He was in a lot of pain after his arrival, but he tried to hide it."

Clary had to smile in spite of herself. "That sounds like Jace."

"I'll take you to see him later," Imogen promised. "For now, let's go home and get you settled."

Clary wasn't sure what kind of transport she'd expected. She'd known that cars didn't work in Idris. That was one reason none of the Nephilim had known how to drive before Charlie and Jack had taught them at least enough so they weren't going to wreck another car. They all still teased Jace about the time he had put Luke's car into a pole by accident.

With that in mind, she shouldn't have been that surprised at the horse-drawn carriage waiting for them outside the building.

It was an open one, which seemed an odd choice given the cold temperatures, and there was an actual coachman in what looked like livery sitting on the box, loosely holding the reins of two matched grey horses that were patiently waiting for the signal to continue.

"Is that the Idris version of a taxi?" Clary asked as they approached.

Imogen chuckled. "More like the Idris version of a personal limousine and chauffeur," she said.

Oh. Well, she'd also known the Herondales were loaded, so she shouldn't have been surprised that they kept servants. Or, she guessed, horses and a coach.

Come to think of it, horses and coaches probably weren't that rare in a place where motor vehicles weren't an option. That thought made her cringe. It wasn't that she was _afraid_ of horses, but she certainly had a very healthy respect for the huge creatures. She couldn't imagine ever getting on one herself.

For now, she pushed the thought aside and climbed into the carriage after Jace's grandmother, settling down across from her on one of the benches.

Imogen gave the command, and off they went.

Alicante, Clary thought, looked like something out of a fairy tale.

The streets they passed through were lined by narrow half-timbered houses, most of them two or three floors high. In some places, they were built side by side, while in others there were narrow gaps between them that surely had served some purpose at one time. Now they were put to various uses that seemed as diverse as the runes burned into the facades and front doors of the houses they belonged to: some were boarded up, others used to fit decorative elements between the buildings. Clary saw tall bushes growing in some, and could only imagine what they would look like when those were in full bloom. Yet others had been converted into street vendor's stalls.

Seeing the latter made her look more closely at the houses, and it wasn't long before she spotted buildings that had workshops or stores on the ground floor, rather than being purely residential in nature. For all that the Nephilim were, by and large, soldiers and expected to do their duty in the fight against demons, Alicante still was a city that had to keep its population fed and supplied with necessities.

With the hour what it was, Clary had the chance to catch a few glimpses of people opening shops, and determined that what Alec and Jace had once implied was true: Only those who were too old or too young to be out in the field lived permanently in Alicante and took care of the businesses and whatever else there was that wasn't directly connected to their sacred duty.

They passed through quarters that seemed newer than the city center, where half-timbered houses gave way to whitewashed and painted ones of solid brick, and the neat rows morphed into something more varied. The buildings were set back from the street a little here, though the small front yards were already in winter mode, with barely any green showing.

These buildings, too, were marked with runes without exception.

Beyond it all, she could always see the shining adamant spires that were called the demon towers – those mysterious structures that, as she had read, Raziel had called up when he had gifted the land of Idris to the newly made Jonathan Shadowhunter.

Imogen let her look and take it all in, without distracting her or trying to play the tour guide.

Clary didn't even try to remember the way they were going. They passed a few squares, some with fountains, some with statues, some just plain and unadorned. She started to feel sorry that she didn't have a sketch pad out to at least catch a few outlines. She'd have to find some time to explore and draw – but she'd known that before.

Brick houses gave way to villas, each standing separately surrounded by a groomed garden. Then villas turned into mansions, of a kind that Clary had only seen on TV before with the single exception of their visits to Mount Royal in Calgary, where their Gale friends had one of these buildings and used it as a family gathering place. As they put it, it was a practical choice, since it was the only place large enough to accommodate everyone. It also had a heated pool out back.

She wondered idly if any of these did.

The carriage stopped in front of one of these large buildings, and they got off.

Imogen looked at Clary with a satisfied air. "It'll be nice to have someone in the house again who isn't staff. It can grow quite lonesome here at times."

Clary wondered if that was supposed to be an attempt to make her feel welcome in the Herondale home. There wasn’t much love lost between her and Imogen, and she very much believed that went both ways. As far as she was concerned, the invitation to stay at Herondale manor had far more to do with keeping Jace's girlfriend close than with any wish to support the daughter of Jocelyn Fairchild.

A servant appeared seemingly out of nowhere the moment they entered the building, taking Imogen's coat from her. Another stood by, waiting for Clary to do … something?

"Your bags," Imogen prompted. "Maria will put your things in your room."

Clary wanted to protest, insisting that she could put away her own things, but thought better of it.

"I didn't know shadowhunters had servants," she noted as she relinquished the two larger bags that held her clothing and toiletries as well as some art supplies. The messenger bag stayed with her. Surely they wouldn't expect her to hand over her most personal items to a stranger. "I always thought you were… pretty much self-sufficient."

"We," Imogen corrected. "And mostly that is true. Only the very oldest, very most important families still do. It is a leftover from times long past, when this was very common. Mostly, we were served by mundanes with the Sight. That custom has fallen almost entirely out of use and is only practiced in very few corners of the world anymore. You'll get used to it."

Clary wasn't sure she wanted to but she said nothing as she followed Imogen through the house. A large entrance hall was followed by a series of rooms: A sitting room, according to Imogen meant to entertain guests who weren't part of the family and not supposed to enter more deeply into the house; a room she referred to as the smoking room, which luckily didn't smell of smoke, but held a liquor cabinet that she thought Magnus would have enjoyed, along with a billiards table and a dartboard. Clary couldn't imagine Imogen playing either game, but wondered if it would be very improper to invite the Lightwoods over. She knew Alec enjoyed a game of pool now and then.

Next came a dining room, furnished to impress, and a private library that was connected to a living area that looked somewhat more personalized than the first room they'd passed through. There were none of the usual mundane electronics – no TV or stereo system for the Nephilim in Alicante – but the room did sport an antique gramophone that Clary suspected was only for decoration, and a piano of the same kind the Gales had in their basement library. The thought made her grin.

"Do you play?" Imogen asked her as Clary ran a hand over the side of the instrument.

She shook her head. "I draw and paint, but I don't do music. Jace plays beautifully."

"Do you?" Imogen said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "And does he? I do both. I'll show you some of my work later, and you must show me some of yours. Did you bring anything?"

"I fear I brought more art supplies than I brought clothes," Clary admitted.

They went upstairs next, where Imogen showed her to a room that, if it was a guest room, was the largest such thing Clary had ever seen. Her luggage was there, the duffle unpacked already – they'd have to have a talk about that. She could very well unpack her own things.

At least her paints, sketchpads and the folding easel hadn't been touched. Apparently, Maria knew that one didn't mess with an artist's tools.

"I'll leave you to get settled," Imogen told her. "Come see me when you're ready. I'll be in my office, down this corridor."

Clary waited until the door was firmly shut behind her, then turned and spread a series of charms on it, glamoring them invisible when she was done. The windows were next. For good measure, she treated the walls towards the adjacent rooms in a similar manner. It felt a bit paranoid, but after what had happened with Alec's bow, she felt she had the right to be a bit paranoid.

She repeated the procedure with the en-suite bathroom and went through her things next, making sure nothing had been messed with.

Finally, she tossed her quilt on the bed and pulled out her phone to let Alec and Izzy know she'd arrived safely.

*

Jace alternated between pretending that he was asleep and staring at the ceiling.

A procession of medics and Silent Brothers had been in and out of his room, studying his wound and applying runes that burned on his skin and seemed to do nothing else. At least it appeared like they were managing to get the hole through skin, muscle and bone to close up slowly.

The room they had given him looked more like a comfortable guest room than a hospital one, or would have if it hadn't been for the monitors behind the bed. He'd spotted the camera quickly enough, and it hadn't escaped his notice that they still brought him water in plastic vessels.

When they had finally stopped the prodding and poking and left him once again uselessly bound to the bed with a set of runes – he still failed to see the point: What could he possibly do to make his injury any worse than it was? –, it didn't take long before another unbidden visitor appeared.

This one was a woman who pulled one of the chairs spread through the room over to his side and made herself comfortable in it without waiting for an invitation.

He only half-listened to her as she introduced herself as Victoria Pinecross and did his best to tune her out while she went on about his options going forward from here. According to her lecture, those lay mostly along the lines of simply retiring, which he was surely too young for, trying to get a teaching position, which she didn't seem particularly in favor of, and becoming a research assistant in the Silent City, where the Silent Brothers could continue to take care of his needs when he left the hospital, which she seemed to consider by far the superior choice. That was, provided that he wasn't interested in actually taking the path of a Silent Brother himself. One didn't need to be able to fight while cloistered away in the Silent City and dedicating one's life to studies and improving the capacities of one's mind.

"Look, Veronica," he said when she stopped for a moment to breathe. "I'm not going to hide away in the Silent City. I don't think my girlfriend would like that very much either.

"It's Victoria," she said, sadly shaking her head. "You don't have to come to a decision right away, Jace. I'm sure your girlfriend would like to know you're where you'll have the best possible support. I just want you to know that you still have _options_."

She didn't have the first idea of what his _options_ were, or would be if he wasn't stuck in Idris, of all places.

"Please," she went on, "Do feel free to ask for me if you want to talk about them – or anything else."

Jace snorted. "Does anyone ever take you up on that offer?" Diplomacy may not have been his strong suit, but he thought that even he could have gone about this particular talk more tactfully than she had. At least she hadn't implied he wasn't good enough for Clary anymore, or expressed a concern that he would be incapable now of contributing to the continuation of the shadowhunter lines, which made it very selfish of him to cling to his position as anyone's boyfriend, let alone aspiring to become more than that. He'd heard both from one of the medics, and greatly regretted the lack of something throwable within his reach.

"I know you probably feel like your life is over now," she said, ignoring his words. "But it doesn't have to be. You will surely come to understand that over time."

"Your words," Jace said. "Not mine. Look, I'm actually tired here. I was portaled in with a six-hour time difference, so as far as my inner clock is concerned it's the middle of the night now, and I'd like to rest."

"You'll get used to Idris time quickly," Victoria promised with a sweetness that sounded so forced Jace wanted to scream at her.

"I know," he shot back. "This isn't my first time portaling over. Now will you leave me to my nap, or do I need to draw you a map to the door? If so, get me a pen and some paper."

She shook her head at him, but she did rise from her chair. Instead of simply taking her leave, she bent over him to twitch his blanket into place – a gesture she probably thought would make him feel like she cared about him, but that actually had the opposite effect.

He wasn't four years old, he wasn't a complete invalid, and she was neither Clary, nor his mother – that was, Maryse – , nor Alec or Izzy, which was the full list of people he would have accepted that kind of move from.

He slapped her hand away. "You do not touch me or anything on this bed without permission," he hissed, his voice low but with an edge of steel. "Which you do not have, and certainly will not get."

That caught her by surprise. She'd apparently underestimated both his speed and his unenhanced strength. As she jerked back, something slid out of the outer jacket of her coat and landed in the folds of his blanket.

Barely believing his eyes, he twitched the edge of the blanket over it before she could notice.

"Out." He said when her mouth opened again. "Now."

She finally seemed to see the wisdom in obeying his words.

He allowed himself a sigh of relief when she was gone. Once a few minutes had passed, he set to slowly, carefully, retrieving the small, black rectangle, while doing his best to conceal what he was doing.

Eventually, he had it where he could glance at it, with his blanket shielding his hand and its contents.

Gale phones always returned to their owners.

Gale phones never lost reception.

Gale phones didn't run on batteries the way normal phones did.

He slid his Gale phone under his pillow, blocking the light of the small white digits. He could busy himself thinking of a better hiding place for it now – and a way to open it without being caught so he could see if it was usable beyond telling him the time. 

*

It was late by the time they finally got around to checking on Jace. Clary would have preferred to do that first thing after getting her room secured and informing her friends that she was now on site, but Imogen had different ideas.

They had spent the rest of the morning talking about the training Clary was supposed to receive. Of course, it couldn't be as simple as signing up for a few classes.

Young shadowhunters focused on physical and combat skills, with very little academic learning added in. That was for those who survived for long enough to retire. Still, with Clary's near-total lack of knowledge about shadowhunter history and customs, Imogen agreed that scheduling regular book-learning hours would be a good idea.

Sadly, there was very little by way of adult education in the basics of combat training or acrobatics available in Alicante. Since young shadowhunters had their rune ceremony around the age of twelve, which made them soldiers who were expected to participate in missions, and they spent time before that in various institutes around the world to acquire more combat skills as well as knowledge on downworlders and various ways of handling them, any regular training group that existed would contain children less than half Clary's size, or people who had several decades of experience on her, who were stationed in Alicante and needed to stay in shape.

There was no way around finding her a private tutor.

"At least it doesn't need to be someone who's living around the corner," Imogen sighed. "You can borrow one of our horses and go to wherever you need to be."

Clary made a face. "Actually, I can't ride," she admitted.

The corner of Imogen's mouth twitched, and it wasn't in a particularly pleased way. "Horses are the main mode of transport in Idris," she said sternly. "Since cars and the like don't work." She added riding lessons to the ever-growing list of shadowhunter skills Clary was missing.

She'd never realized just how many things she didn't know when she'd been out with her friends in New York. They'd called it training. They'd taught her a lot, in fact, given her the basics of some hand-to-hand combat and fencing, but mostly she'd relied on instinct, sheer dumb luck and her runes.

For the first time, staring at the page of skills someone her age was expected to have mastered here, she began to understand Alec's early misgivings about having her on any kind of mission at all.

She started to wonder how she was going to fit in all of that _and_ still find time to work on their other little problem with Alec, Izzy and Jace.

Imogen promised to look into finding someone who had enough time on their hands to tutor Clary on a regular basis, and sent her off to her room to take a nap and catch up on the sleep she'd missed the night before.

Since it was Clary's first time skipping across that many time zones – her only other experience with time zones had been when they'd returned from Calgary – she hadn't protested.

When she'd woken up, refreshed from a couple of hours' sleep under the heavily charmed quilt, Imogen had not been in the house.

Of course – she had work to do, too.

Clary had spent some time texting back and forth with Alec and Izzy, filling them in on the results of her morning in the Herondale home, and eventually gone downstairs to check out Imogen's library.

She'd settled on a history book, to prove that she was perfectly willing to get a headstart on her Nephilim education, and read as she waited.

It was late in the afternoon by the time Imogen returned, and Clary was getting decidedly impatient by then. She'd even started considering asking the Lightwoods for directions so she could find the hospital on her own.

Luckily, Imogen didn't stall when she asked her that same question.

"I thought you'd probably want to see him," she said instead. "Which is why I've dropped by here before checking on him myself. Get a coat. The coach is still waiting outside."

This time, Clary tried to pay attention to the path they took. The sooner she didn't need to rely on someone who knew the way, the sooner she could just run over whenever she had some time to spare. Alicante couldn’t be that big, could it?

The next surprise waited for Clary when they entered the large building, and Imogen took hold of a medic to ask some questions.

She couldn't understand a word that the two exchanged.

"What language was that?" she wanted to know once they were on their way again.

Imogen looked at her with some surprise. Then she actually laughed. "The language of Idris, of course. Why, did you think people here routinely spoke English?"

Actually, Clary hadn't given that much thought.

"Everyone in the Institute spoke English…"

"The New York Institute is in New York," Imogen noted, quite redundantly. "Of course people speak English there. Idris is located between Germany, France and Switzerland. Why would we use English? Our language has developed from a mixture of German and French. We acquire the languages for the areas where we are stationed at need."

"Are there runes for that?" Clary asked, unable to keep a hopeful note out of her voice. She already had Latin and Ancient Greek on the list of things she needed to get at least basic knowledge of.

The older woman nodded. "Actually, there are. But just as with the physical enhancement runes – it is very much recommended that you supplement the runes with actual learning."

"Great," Clary said. "More lessons."

This one she didn't even mind. Jace had apparently learned the language she had grown up speaking – it was only fair if she learned the one of his home country. Still, that, even more than anything else she had realized that day, drove home just how much her mother had kept from her by raising her in secret.

Jace's room was comfortably furnished, making it easy to forget that it was in a hospital, until one's eyes fell on the monitor or one of the few other objects that weren't as well concealed.

Jace had a displeased look on his face when Imogen opened the door, but his expression lit up when he spotted Clary.

"Hey," he said, holding out a hand in her direction. "You made it!"

She hurried to his side, taking his hand in both of hers and, after a moment, sitting down on the edge of the bed while Imogen made herself comfortable in one of the upholstered chairs.

"How are you doing?"

Jace made a face. "Mostly wondering what they dragged me through a portal for. So far, they don't seem to have done much, and nothing they couldn't have done in New York. I haven't been able to catch a hold of anyone who's either willing or able to answer questions on my condition beyond 'it's permanent', and the best information I got on what is actually going on with my back still is the one I got in the New York infirmary. So why am I even here?"

Imogen actually looked uncomfortable under the stare he directed past Clary.

"I've been assured multiple times that the transfer couldn't worsen your condition because there is no worse than 'irreparable'," she said. "And I was assured equally often that Idris could offer far superior care."

Jace gave a scornful laugh.

"You know what would make for far superior care?" he asked. "People actually knocking before they walk into this room. People actually asking permission before they touch me, or move me, especially the parts where I can't feel it. People actually answering questions. Taking those runes off the bed because if portaling can't make my back any worse, then surely getting a bit more comfortable on the bed can't either. Oh, and giving me my stele would help."

"Oh come on, Jace," Imogen said reasonably, "aren't you being a bit unfair there?"

"Unfair?" Jace shot back. "Imagine being bound to a bed, being left mostly in the dark about what's going on with you and being treated as if you were part of the furniture. Does that really sound unfair to you?"

Imogen nodded, though hesitantly. "I'll see what I can do about that. Is there anything else you need?"

"A book or two would be nice," Jace noted. "It's awfully boring here all day. Other than that – just Clary."

She smiled at him and bent down to kiss him.

Imogen interrupted them. "I fear we only have a few minutes. It's a busy day, and I could only take a short break, but I wanted to give you two the opportunity to see each other, even if it's just briefly. I'll try to make some more time tomorrow, but Clary will take up her lessons as soon as we can arrange a tutor, and then her time will be limited, too."

Clary felt Jace's grip on her hand tighten and saw his face fall at the information.

"Actually," she said, "I can stay for a while. I memorized the route on the way here. I can walk back. I think the fresh air will be nice, too."

"I'm not sure…" Imogen began.

The younger woman twisted around to look at her. "Why? I thought Alicante was the safest place for Nephilim. Is there any risk that someone will jump me in a dark alley on my way back?"

"It's quite a way to walk."

"I'm a good walker. And no better way to learn my way around the city, is there?"

It was clear that Imogen didn't like to concede to that, but she knew to pick her battles. "Alright then. I'll be back tomorrow, Jace."

Clary waited until Imogen had closed the door behind herself. Then she slipped off her shoes, scooted a little sideways on the bed and lowered herself down by Jace's side, fitting her body against his as closely as she could.

He pulled her close, clearly craving the touch. Though the runes that held him in place kept him from properly meeting her half-way, he leaned into her as far as he could.

"Right front pocket," Clary whispered, her words so low that it was unlikely for any recording device to pick them up.

Jace shifted his hand and slid two fingers into the designated place, fishing out Clary's stele. "You sure?"

She nodded against his shoulder, and the slim silver rod disappeared into his sleeve.

"My phone came back to me," he told her. His lips barely moved, but she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

A smile tugged on her mouth. "They work. I've been texting Alec and Izzy all day."

"Will you really find your way back? You can still run after Imogen if you want to." He didn't call her 'grandmother' when she wasn't around to hear. That was hardly surprising – until a few weeks ago, he hadn't even known that he was a Herondale.

"I would," Clary assured him. "But I'm going to get so lost, and then I'll see that Izzy can rescue me and deliver me home. I need a tutor, you know."

She felt, rather than heard, him chuckle. The idea hadn't come to her until Imogen had made it clear that she planned to leave again right away, but once it had been there, it had quickly settled down to stay. This way, she could get some extra time alone with Jace – or as alone as they could be, since she had no doubt they were being filmed – and also officially re-establish contact with the Lightwoods.

They stayed as they were, soaking up as much of the other's presence as they could, while Jace told Clary everything he could think of about Alicante and the places he wanted to show her once he was able to get around again, until the door opened.

Jace had been right. People didn't knock here.

"Miss Fairchild," a deep, male voice said. "I'm afraid it's time for you to leave. We need to take care of some things for Mr. Herondale now."

Judging by the face Jace made, he had an idea of what that entailed, and he didn't like it. He stole one last kiss for the day. "It's okay, Clary," he told her. "I'll see you tomorrow."


	6. Chapter 6

Luke was sitting in his living room, a piece of paper in his hand.

He'd written out a few messages, and torn them, in the last day. The tale Alec and his friends had spun for him had been incredible, and he was fully prepared to discard it as entirely made-up – it went against so many things that he had believed in all his life. And yet: every time he tried to figure out why they might have made up such an elaborate story, he came up short.

They must have had at least an idea of how the information would hit him. That kind of cruelty wasn't like them.

He might have been willing to consider that they, themselves, had been led on, that they had been the targets of some deception – but the not-quite-runes they had drawn all over the boat house had worked.

But even if Nephilim could, for some reason that he still couldn't wrap his mind around, use runes without a stele, even if so much of what they had been led to believe was actually wrong – he was no longer one of the Nephilim. He'd lost that status when his _parabatai_ had lured him into the werewolf den.

He wasn't sure what was worse: trying Alec's theory and failing, or never trying and living with the uncertainty.

In the end, what decided him had nothing to do with Nephilim. He was the alpha werewolf. If he had, in some strange way, still access to runes, he could use that knowledge to keep his pack safe.

In the end, he had to know.

Eventually, he had discarded every draft he had written, and ended up with a very short message. The page, addressed to Magnus Bane, held one word:

 _Test_.

He put his pen down at the bottom of the sheet, and, fixing Magnus in his mind, drew, the motion feeling strange and yet still oddly familiar after so many years of abstinence from runes.

The paper caught fire, and he let it go, giving it a gentle push upwards as it dissolved before his eyes.

He found that he was breathing hard, as if he had just run a race.

How _could_ it be?

He was still mulling it over, when a piece of smoldering paper floated down from above, and he reached up to catch it. A second later, he held his page in his hand again. The reverse bore Magnus' handwriting. It read:

_So you've decided to give it a try. Congratulations._

Below that, a design was drawn.

_In the palm of your sword hand, then pick up a seraph blade. Best regards from Bea Gale, she wants to know what happens. Magnus._

It wasn't a design he had ever seen before. Did Magnus know that he had kept the blade he had used when they had found Jocelyn? Probably.

Intent, Focus and Power, Alec had said. Didn't intent mean that he had to know what it was supposed to do?

Maybe intent for it _to_ work was all it took. Then again, he thought he knew what it was supposed to do, just based on the task.

His palms were sweaty already, so he used the tip of one finger to mark his left hand, drawing the design as large as he dared without distorting the shape or cutting off the edges. Then he went to collect the sword from where he had stashed it.

It had been nineteen years since he'd last felt that little moment in which a seraph blade connected with its wielder. He thought he'd forgotten what it was like, but he realized the moment his fingers closed around the hilt that that was impossible.

As soon as the blade lit up, it was as familiar to him as if the last time he had used one of the shining swords had been only yesterday. The blade was part of him, moving with him like an extension of his arm, not an object he held on to.

He executed a few moves, relishing in the moment, before sheathing the blade again.

He picked up his page and penned another message below Magnus'.

_Works like a charm._

The rune came faster this time, the lines much more confident.

He was already on the way outside when a new message floated down into his hands. It was written on a fresh sheet, in a handwriting entirely unfamiliar to him. It immediately made him think of an elderly lady, however.

 _It's_ meant _to go on a misted-over window or mirror to clear a spot,_ she had written. _But thank you for confirming a theory._

It was signed "Auntie Bea."

He hadn't ever had an Auntie Bea, but it seemed that he had now acquired one. From what the young Nephilim had told him, he wasn't sure he wanted to have any more dealings with the elder Gale women than he absolutely couldn't avoid. He understood that that statement could turn out to be very relative.

With an improbable sound that was half a laugh and half a sigh, he pulled back his sleeve and put an invisibility glamor on the inside of his forearm. He'd see how moving among mundanes would work with that.

He'd lived the first nineteen years of his life as the Shadowhunter Lucian Greymark.

He'd lived the next nineteen years as the werewolf Luke Garroway.

He really thought he should get another nineteen years to learn to fold the two into one.

*

Clary walked away from the hospital, following the street they had come. She didn't remember the route as such, but she remembered the buildings they had passed, the squares they had crossed, and the monuments she had seen from the coach.

She waited until she had reached a towering building that she was sure she would be able to find again even from some distance simply by looking for it over the roofs of the buildings before she took a wrong turn deliberately. She didn't want to get lost for real if Izzy couldn't, for some reason, come and pick her up.

Once she had reached another landmark that looked sufficiently memorable to her, she ducked into one of those small gaps between houses to shield her from sight, and took a picture of the fountain she was facing.

 _I got a bit lost on the way back to Herondale Manor,_ she texted Izzy. _Any chance you could happen to run into me?_ She attached the photograph and hit "Send".

The response came faster than Clary had expected, and in a way she hadn't expected at all. The front door of a house across the square opened, and Isabelle came jogging across, heading right for where Clary had concealed herself.

"Hey!" The two young women fell into a tight hug

"So glad you're here!" Izzy said when they released each other again. "How lost do you want to be? Do you have time for a piece of pie? We have pie!"

"You have pie?" Clary hadn't eaten since lunch, and she was definitely getting hungry. "Won't your father notice?"

Izzy was already pulling her friend across the square towards their home. "Dear Dad decided he wanted more time for his affair, and less time with his two brats who keep sullying the family name." It didn't sound quite as bitter as the words suggested, but there wasn't much missing. "The good thing is, Alec and I have the run of the house."

"A small piece, then," Clary agreed. "But it can't take too long. I don't want Imogen to send out a posse to search for me."

Entering the Lightwoods' house, Clary realized that the front facades she could see from the streets and the squares were misleading. The houses went on and on, with windowless rooms brightened up by witchlight and ventilated by Fresh-Air runes high up on the walls.

The furnishings were ornate yet solid, the kind of antiques her mother would have been only too happy to get her hands on. Clary could only guess at the wealth that this house held just in terms of furniture. Yet, every piece was clearly used – not in a way that made them look worn or shabby, but rather in the well-inhabited manner that brought antiques to life.

That was something she'd been missing in Imogen's house: that had been a manor, set up to impress and represent. This was a home.

Given the choice of living here or in Herondale Manor, she would have moved in with the Lightwood siblings without giving the matter a second thought.

Seated around a cherrywood table, her two hosts took turns filling her in on the details that their earlier text messages simply hadn't been convenient for, while Clary shared what news she had of Jace.

"Also," she added when her piece of pie was all but gone, "Imogen put together this ginormous list of things I need to learn, and she was going to find me a tutor. Now, maybe if you safely deliver me to her, Iz, you could offer. Since, you know, you're here already, and you don't really have a lot to do."

"And I'm supposed to go where people can see I'm not trembling and sweating and freezing at the same time and also not sneaking out into the forests to try and find myself a vampire," Isabelle said. "Everyone should be happy then."

"What do I do in this plan?" Alec asked.

Clary's response was instantaneous. "You come along and help Izzy train me!"

"Aren't you supposed to be angry at me?"

"Can I grudgingly make up with you for Izzy's sake?"

Isabelle nodded emphatically. "You'll have to! He's my big brother, after all. And besides, we'll actually need him to help with some of the combat training."

"Works for me," Clary said. "I think you better rescue me and show me the way home now, though. I'm not sure how long it's humanly possible to get lost in Alicante."

The Lightwoods laughed. "If you veer off of the main streets? A long time!"

 

_November 17 th, 2016_

Jace had resisted the urge of breaking the holding runes, either by seeing if he could reverse his rune activation ability, or using the stele Clary had left with him.

It had been a close call. Eating the breakfast they'd brought him was a juggling act while fully horizontal, and he refused to let anyone help him with the food. He was not going to be fed like a child while he had two functional arms and hands.

The empty tray had been taken away, and a nurse had shown up to help him wash – in which 'help' meant that he was being efficiently and impersonally handled like a doll.

He hated every second of that, and it took all his willpower to keep his feelings on it contained. He'd found the day before that there wasn't much of a point in arguing.

After that, he waited, half-expecting another visit from one or several of the Silent Brothers, to continue their useless ministrations.

Instead, it was an older medic who came to his room, silver-haired and looking quite venerable. It reminded Jace that he was going to have to start the potion treatment for his rune damage over from step one.

"Good morning, Mr. Herondale," the man said. "Jace. Can I call you Jace?"

Jace made a face. "Would it change a thing if I said no?"

The man ignored that. "I hear that you're unhappy with the care you have received so far."

That drew a snort from Jace. "You could say that."

"Inquisitor Herondale says you're displeased about the holding runes."

"Wouldn’t you be?" Jace asked. "What could I possibly do without them that would be more dangerous than shoving me through a portal? Since that already happened, it seems quite useless to immobilize me now."

"It's for your own comfort," the medic told him. Jace noted that the man hadn't even had the good manners to introduce himself. "I'm sure you remember the pain the portal caused. Any kind of sudden movement would be extremely unpleasant for you at this point. The Brothers have made good progress in closing your wound and regenerating the bone. I'm sure we can take the runes off a few days from now."

It didn't escape Jace's notice that the man said nothing about regenerating the nerves that ran _inside_ his spine. "I'll just make sure not to make any sudden moves. Unless you can explain to me how my chances at recovery improve with them on, the runes come off today."

"I will bring it up with the Brothers," the medic said. "But you must understand, Jace, that some injuries are not something even we can make a full recovery from."

"Especially not after having it scrambled by a portal," Jace spat.

The man shook his head, a serious expression on his face. "The portal made no difference. Your wound was too severe before that."

"Fine," Jace said. "I want to see my medical file. I want to know everything about this injury that there is to know." Having the detailed information would surely help him coordinate with the Gales and Catarina about fixing his spine.

"What would you do with it?" the medic asked immediately. "Do you have any medical training?"

"I know how to use a library."

Another shake of the silvered head, followed by a sigh. "I'll see what I can do about that. Was there anything else?"

Jace glared at him. "I haven't seen my stele since I woke up. I want it back."

"What do you need a stele for right now?" He seemed genuinely confused.

"I didn't say I needed it, I said I wanted it. It's my property. Speaking of property – why am I wearing this?" He plucked at the hospital shirt.

"It's more practical," the medic said, his tone one of reasonable explanation.

"I thought you were trying to keep me comfortable. This is not comfortable. This is annoying at best and embarrassing at worst. I know Maryse packed a bag with my things, so where are they?"

The man pointed at the simple cabinet standing against the wall. "I believe the bag is in there. Nothing has been removed from it."

"I trust Maryse packed me some pajamas…"

"That is needlessly complicated for the moment." The medic leaned forward in his chair, studying Jace's reaction. "Jace, there are a few things you must understand about the nature of your wound. For one, you no longer have any conscious control of your bladder or bowels."

Jace felt a muscle in his face twitch involuntarily. "Yeah, thanks for letting me know. That one completely escaped my attention."

The medic was silent, and Jace started to suspect he hadn't caught the sarcasm in his statement.

"There must be a way to manage that. I'm hardly the first person this has ever happened to."

The old man inclined his head. "We are managing it."

"No." Jace made no effort to keep back the vehemence in his voice. "There must be a way for _me_ to manage it."

"There is," the medic confirmed. "You will learn that eventually. When you've had some more time to heal."

This most definitely was not a subject Jace wanted to discuss with the medic. It wasn't a subject he wanted to discuss with anyone. Still, anything had to be better than being handled by the nurses, with no way to see or feel what they were even doing. He gritted his teeth and forced the words out. "I will learn it today."

The man sighed. "That would be difficult while you are held by the runes."

Jace gave him a hard stare. A large part of him really wanted to give in and put off the inevitable. Maybe his angel blood would kick in and he'd be fine in a few days…

But maybe it wouldn't, and then he'd regret every day he let himself be at their mercy later. He had to leave Idris to put his other plan into practice, and for that, he first needed to get out of this room and out of this hospital – which meant that not only would his back have to heal enough for them to pronounce themselves done with it, he had to get past the need for a nurse to _manage_ anything for him.

"Are we agreed that turning them off will not cause me any further damage?"

"Yes, but—"

Jace didn't wait for him to finish. He focused on the line of runes that held him, and he knew his eyes were shining golden with angelic power from the medic's sudden change of expression just a moment before he felt the hold on his body recede.

He pushed himself up on his elbows, ignoring the stab that went through his back at the movement. "Now would be a good time. Please. Before my grandmother shows up."

*

Alec had started his day with a morning workout in the small gym set up on the house's ground floor, followed by a hurried shower and breakfast wolfed down as fast as he possibly could without choking on it.

Izzy had left early, since her agreement with Imogen Herondale included picking up Clary at a time at which they would very much all have preferred to still be asleep. Imogen appeared to be an early riser, and to expect everyone else to keep equally early hours.

The plan further included that Izzy would spend the first hour or two with Clary at the Herondale home with language studies, and then set out to start the first set of exercise. That was going to be when Alec would run into them.

He left the house, feeling a bit nervous. It was their second morning in Alicante. With the way Aldertree had kept repeating that he wanted a full psych evaluation of Alec, he had expected to be informed that he was to report somewhere to someone to commence proceedings very quickly. He hadn't looked forward to it, but he was already starting to suspect that it would have been better to just get it over with than to spend an indeterminate amount of time in the uncertainty of not knowing when he was going to be summoned.

So far, no one had contacted him.

That was, no one involved with Aldertree. He'd spent almost an hour on the phone with Magnus the night before, thanking every angel and the Gales for a working line of communication. He'd fallen asleep with the phone between the pillow and his head and Magnus' voice in his ear.

He'd woken up with the phone laid neatly by his side, rather than with its shape imprinted on his face. That was another thing to be thankful for. His sister surely wouldn't have let him hear the end of that.

There'd been a fire message, too – from Luke. It contained two words: _Thank you._

At the time, he'd already known that Luke had chosen to try out his theory, and been successful: Auntie Bea had called him earlier, asking question upon question about Luke. He eventually told her outright that he thought Luke was much too young for her, and Bea had laughed. He'd been lucky, he figured, that she hadn't gone to the trouble of pointing out that he and Magnus weren't exactly within the seven-year age bracket the Gale family usually considered acceptable for relationships.

He felt his phone shudder as he was just a few steps away from the house. It wasn't a full vibration – apparently, the phones had all understood that they couldn't be noticed by anyone anywhere in Idris, and, in keeping with their nature as proper smart phones, adjusted to it.

Alec ducked back into the house and closed the door to use the protection of the charms on it.

 _Back in the game. Thanks for sending me my phone!_ Jace had texted him.

So his _parabatai_ had found a way to conceal use of the phone from the camera in his room. Alec sent back a happy smiley and followed up with another message: _Need anything?_

While he waited for Jace's answer, he typed down a summary of the state of affairs on their end.

*

He'd spent about half an hour running in the streets of Alicante, fast enough to work up a sweat and make it credible as exercise, and zigzagging randomly enough through alleys and side streets, inserting vaults over low walls and other obstacles into his route, that someone tracking him hopefully wouldn't get the impression that he was going out with the specific intention of running into Izzy and Clary.

Was there a risk that someone was tracking him?

Well, if there wasn't then the extra exercise still wouldn't hurt.

And if there was, then all the effort was probably in vain because there was a good likelihood that Clary would have a tracker on her, too, and they knew perfectly well she'd been at their place the night before. But the extra exercise still wouldn't hurt.

He came across the two women halfway along the route Izzy had said they would take. He actually tried to turn and duck back into the street he'd come from, but Izzy was calling his name.

"Imogen thinks I need to accept that accidents happen," Clary told Alec without any preamble. "So I guess if you promise to be more careful with your bow in future, we're alright."

Alec couldn't quite suppress a laugh at that. "You're lucky no one's likely to listen in on us _here._ That was not particularly convincing. Wait - Imogen says that?"

"Yeah, I was surprised, too," Clary told him. "But it seems that _she_ thinks Jace will need his _parabatai_ and forgive you soon enough, and then I shouldn't be harboring any misgivings against you either."

"Then let's do that," Alec said. "Speaking of Jace - I don't know how he did it, but he managed to text me this morning. So now it's our turn to deliver something."

Clary nodded. "I know we're supposed to spend the rest of the morning with combat training and acrobatics, but may I suggest a change of plan? My mother's family had a town house, and it seems it's just been left to stand empty as they left it when she was presumed dead. I'd like to have a look at it. Imogen says that technically it's mine." She fished in her pocket and brought out a key ring. "She also gave me these. I was a bit surprised you don't use steles to lock your houses!"

"We," Alec corrected her. "We don't use steles to lock our houses. You know what happens if you lose that stele you used to lock it with on a mission?"

The young woman considered that for a second. "Then why do you lock your safes in the Institute with them? Wouldn't that be the same problem?"

"The computer can override those locks with the right safety clearance," Izzy told her. She mirrored the displeased expression Clary showed at that. "Yes. I realize the issue with that. Now I do, in any case. Before, it seemed like a handy safety backup, and who'd ever want to go at my things anyway…"

"Do you have an address?" Alec didn't want to think of how Aldertree might, in fact, be going through his safe right now. Luckily, there wasn't anything in there that could get him into trouble.

The Fairchild town house was one of the smaller buildings near the town center, with only two floors and a roof. Still, Clary thought, if it was nearly as long as the Lightwoods' house, it would be larger than anything she'd ever lived in as a mundane girl – possibly larger than Simon's home even. She wondered how her mother had managed if she'd been used to having that much space to herself.

"Why has no one ever claimed this house?" Clary asked as she fiddled with the lock. It seemed that even nephilim locks grew rusty if not used.

"Maybe the Valentine connection," Alec suggested. "People probably didn't fancy living in the house that belonged to Valentine's wife. Also, it's tiny."

Clary laughed at that, and he continued: "The Fairchilds had a proper manor in the outskirts. That's the house that Valentine burned down back then. There's not much left of it now. This house was probably just a leftover kept so family members had their own place to sleep in if they went to Clave meetings that ran late and didn't fancy returning to the manor in the dark. The streets haven't always been lit as well as they are now."

Clary threw herself into the door, groaning along with it. It remained stuck.

Stepping aside, she gestured to Alec.

He put a rune on the edge of the door before giving it a hard shove with his shoulder. Still, it took him, too, a few tries before door and frame finally separated, and it swung open on creaking hinges.

"Are the neighbors going to think we're breaking in and call the police?" Clary asked.

The windows out front hadn't been cleaned in nineteen years, so any light that fell into the building was filtered through dirty panels. The air inside was stale.

They didn't bother with witchlight, instead inscribing the sunlight rune on the wall next to the door, while Alec, the only one of them tall enough to have any hopes of reaching there without stepping on something, stretched to activate the ventilation runes. They shoved the door shut and marked it with another set of charms.

"No police," Izzy said. "And if anyone comes to investigate, all they have to do is take one look at you and they'll know you have every right to be here."

Moving through the long abandoned building was an eerie experience. Even knowing that nothing could possibly lurk in an old nephilim home at the center of Alicante, they almost expected to be jumped every time they walked through a door.

Dust formed thick blankets on every surface. In what had once been a dining room, Alec picked a picture off the wall and gently blew on it to remove the worst of the dust. The cloud he swirled up made him cough.

He showed the picture to Clary as soon as he was breathing reasonably clean air again.

"Jocelyn Fairchild and Valentine Morgenstern in happier days," he noted. They seemed about their own age in it, or possibly even a little younger.

Clary stared at it for a moment and wiped one hand over her eye to get rid of the dust that was making her tear up. All that managed to do was make it worse.

"Someone needs to clean up in here," she determined.

"That'd be the person who owns it," Izzy teased, which earned her a grimace from Clary.

They walked upstairs, carefully testing every step and finding that the wood was still solid and didn't show the least bit of rot. One room was a study, filled with books and a desk still cluttered with paper and implements. There were a couple of steles among the pencils in one of the holders.

After rifling through the desk for a few moments, Clary came up with a notebook that was mostly empty. She tore out the first few pages that had been scribbled on – not in her mother's handwriting – laid the steles on the next page and pushed down on them with two fingers.

"I've been thinking about what Allie said about using this Wild Power as a moving van," she said. "Anything in here is mine, right? So I think I'll take a _drawing_ of anything we find that we can use. We'll just have to come back with a larger sketch pad sometime soon."

"Maybe not!" Izzy called from the back of the house. "Clary, you should have a look at this!"

The last room faced south. Once, when the tree standing behind the building had been properly trimmed and groomed, and the large windows had been clean, it had probably had amazing lighting. Jocelyn must have thought so in any case, since she had very clearly used this room as a studio. Two easels with canvases on them were standing on one side, while the various surfaces were covered in pencils, paintbrushes, oil pastels and assorted other art supplies.

"Let's find a bag or something," Clary decided. "I'll take some of these things to use myself. And, I think, this." She picked the largest sketchpad from among a number leaning against the wall and flipped it open. It was unused.

"You know," she said as she wrapped a handful of brushes with a piece of string and dropped them into a canvas bag Izzy had pulled from a drawer. "We should just take anything that's small enough to fit in those pages and looks like it might have any value at all. I realize you guys have some money, and Jace's grandmother is like the definition of loaded, but I think we might want a source of income that's not connected to the Clave."

"You shouldn't have to give up your family's things," Alec protested. He was going through a number of paintings that were leaning below the window. He didn't know much about art, but he thought they were quite good.

Clary shrugged. "I never knew I had them before this, so it won't make a difference."

*

They had almost made it back to the Lightwood house, each of them carrying a couple of sketch pads that contained various objects from around the house and a few shelves worth of the contents of the bookshelves in the little office, when a call from behind stopped them.

"Izzy? Alec!"

All three of them turned, to the sight of two young women stepping out into the street from a nook they had previously concealed themselves in. Izzy's face lit up at the sight.

"Aline!"

They fell into a three-way hug, while Clary and Aline's companion exchanged a look. Clary had met Aline only briefly, that last time she'd visited New York. It had been while her brother Jonathan had impersonated Aline's cousin Sebastian, whom he had eventually killed. Clary had met her only briefly then. She'd been too busy dealing with Simon.

Clary extended a hand in the other woman's direction. "Hi. I'm Clary Fairchild, and this is my first time in Idris, so right now, I can only hope that you speak English."

She laughed as she took the offered hand. "Helen Blackthorn. And I do. How do you find Alicante?"

"A little overwhelming," Clary admitted.

Izzy, too, now turned towards Helen, introducing herself. "Any friend of Aline's is a friend of mine," she promised.

At the look that passed between the two women, her smile widened another fraction, if that was at all possible. "Should that be _girlfriend_?"

Helen half-inclined her head, while Aline's smile turned a little shy.

Izzy pulled her friend into another hug. "I'm so happy for you, Aline!"

"My parents… should not know about this," Aline told her, her voice sober. "I don't think I'm ready for that kind of episode."

Alec made a face. "Just promise you will tell them _before_ you agree to marry a guy and then leave him by the altar and kiss Helen in front of the assembled crowd," he muttered. "I can tell you from personal experience that while very effective as statements go, that is not the best way to deal with parents."

There was a snicker from Izzy, while Clary pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to avoid laughing out loud at the memory. "That was epic," she agreed.

"Wait—" Aline said. "Someone left you standing by the altar? Oh, Alec!"

Alec suddenly took an immense interest in studying the pattern in the masonry of the house he was standing next to. "I fear it was the other way around," he admitted, talking to no one in particular.

Aline's eyes grew wide as she parsed that information. "You never mentioned that when I visited you!"

"In our defense, we had a lot going on that day, and my love life is not the most interesting topic in New York," Alec pointed out. "But why don't you come join us for lunch, and Izzy can fill you in on all the embarrassing details?" Aline was a childhood friend of theirs. If hearing about how he and Magnus had found together helped smooth the way for her, he'd gladly put up with being the target of everyone's amusement for a few hours. "That includes Helen, of course."

"How did Robert and Maryse take it?" Aline asked as they were walking the rest of the way to the Lightwood residence.

Alec swayed his head from side to side. "Mom took it hard at first, but she's come around. She wouldn't admit to it, but I think she actually kind of likes Magnus by now. Dad … is difficult, but not because of that."

"Magnus?" Helen asked. "Not as in 'Magnus Bane', surely? The warlock?"

"The same."

"Alec!" Aline blurted out. "That's impressive! I don't see how I could ever top _that_!"

They'd reached their destination, and Izzy opened the door to let them in. Now was the first time their charm-concealing glamors on the building would be put to the test.

Aline and Helen walked right past them, not giving any indication that they were seeing strangely shiny runes anywhere. So far, so good, Clary thought. Aline clearly knew the place. She led the way into the dining room, stopping only when Izzy swerved into the kitchen. "Do you need any help making lunch?" she asked, her tone wary.

Izzy's inability to cook food that was actually palatable was legendary, potentially topped only by that of Charlie Gale, whose kitchen accidents tended to go to the truly disastrous for the amount of magic any Gale poured into their food.

"Nope," Izzy promised with a laugh. "Even I am perfectly capable of taking food out of the fridge and carrying it over to the table without ruining anything. I hope you like Canadian pie."

"Canadian pie?" Aline sounded confused.

"Alec and Magnus got totally into that, and it's delicious," Izzy repeated what they had told everyone who'd asked about the sudden change to their dietary habits. "You'll see."

Aline went into the kitchen with Izzy anyway, collecting plates from a cabinet. "Is Jace going to join us, too? You didn't leave him in New York, did you?"

The smile left her face when she saw the change to Izzy's expression at her words.

"Where is Jace?"

 


	7. Chapter 7

Jace surreptitiously checked his phone for new messages. He was turned on his side, facing away from the door, his back shielding what he was doing from anyone entering unexpectedly and the blanket pulled up almost over his head and marked with a charm to block the camera's view just in case any light was shining through.

He didn't even know if that thing was recording, or if its use was restricted to patients who needed constant supervision, but he wasn't going to run the risk. He wasn't going to ask either, just in case someone hadn't realized yet that he'd never aimed for Alec to begin with.

They couldn't be stupid enough to not have figured it out – could they?

In any case, if they saw him like this, they could make of that whatever they wanted. Let them think that he was hiding from the world in embarrassment, or wallowing in self-pity at the inevitability of his situation.

He'd been prepared for the medic to order him restrained in some other manner, but either the angelic power display or the Herondale name seemed to carry enough weight to convince him to accommodate his demands.

Admittedly, he'd had several moments of wishing he hadn't insisted. There were apparently some things in the world that he could have quite happily gone without ever knowing they existed. Predominant among them was the one where 'managing' his current situation involved inserting a thin plastic tube in a place where such things had absolutely no business going, as far as he was concerned.

Especially not if he was expected to do so in view of a surveillance camera, since he didn't have any way to take himself to a bathroom right now. That was less than ideal to begin with, the woman the medic had sent him to teach him whatever skills would be relevant for his life from here onwards had sighed. Of course it had been a woman. He could just about imagine the medic mentally going through his staff and trying to settle on whoever was most likely to leave Jace Herondale mortified.

Recording or not, Jace had decided, that camera was going to suffer a brief power rune outage every few hours from now on. They'd have to live with that. He had no doubt that the hospital staff could break into his room even if he engaged the locking rune on the door, but hopefully that would stall them long enough so he could at least keep some privacy.

He'd learned some other things, too. Pressure sores, it seemed, were his new main enemy because they could kill him just as surely as any demon over time. He wondered why that even was an issue if he could just _iratze_ them away, but he'd listened. With the holding runes gone, he was supposed to shift his position regularly. At the same time, he had to pay attention that there weren't any folds forming in the sheet below him, and that he didn't end up with any part of his pajama pants bunched under him.

Most of the things Maryse had packed for him had been declared inacceptable. Apparently, jeans with thick seams along the leg would rub him raw. Rivets were going to leave impressions. Practical pockets along the length of his legs were no longer practical, but potentially dangerous to his health. The style of boots he liked to wear was pronounced out of the question because they were too likely to cut off circulation in his feet. His leather jackets were too long, with the bottom hem cutting into the area he couldn't feel.

Wearing a thigh holster for his stele was completely out of the question. At least he had the stele back. She'd made him put cleansing runes on the palms of his hands with it.

In the end, he was left with the pajamas he had insisted on putting on, and two pairs of track pants. He'd have to go clothes shopping, or at least send a fire message to Maryse, asking her to check his wardrobe in the Institute for something wearable. Unfortunately, he was pretty sure that his preferences and his orders weren't very well compatible.

He'd sent his ideas to Magnus and the Gales as soon as he'd been left to himself again and maneuvered himself into a position in which he could see his phone, but the camera could not. The only thing he made sure to do before that was sending a quick text to Alec.

Magnus' answer had been as quick as it had been sobering.

The adamas contamination soaked into the surrounding tissue, until cutting it clean out would leave a hole beyond warlock healing powers.

Allie's answer had been more uplifting.

_Nothing a proper Second- or First-Circle Healing can't fix. In the worst case, we can still call ritual for an extra power boost._

It was closely followed by another message from Auntie Bea. _She_ saw even less of a problem.

_Send us copies of whatever documentation you have. X-rays, etc. We'll see if we can't put a few charms together. You have two second-circle adults there. With a little instruction, they may be enough._

Jace thought that that was probably a bit too confident, but he was certainly willing to give it a try. Unfortunately, the file he'd been given to read had contained nothing in that respect, and only the bare framework data.

He'd asked for more material. He'd been told there wasn't any more that they could give him. He'd known they were lying and they'd probably known he knew it, but at that moment, there was nothing he could do about it.

There was a knock on the door, which surprised him somewhat.

Sliding the phone back under his pillow, he called a "come in" as he rolled himself onto his back.

The door opened, but instead of a nurse, medic or Silent Brother,– or possibly his grandmother – as Jace had expected, the person who entered was a woman just a few years older than he himself. She was dressed in comfortable clothing that looked somewhat out of place on her – Jace had never seen her dressed for anything other than business, combat or her wedding before. Her right arm rested in a sling.

"Lydia!" Jace pushed himself up into a half-sitting position. "Is that still from the demon? It's been two months! I mean—" He realized that probably was not the welcome she had hoped for. "It's good to see you. How are you?"

She laughed as she crossed to the bed and pulled up a chair to get closer to Jace's level "It's good to see you, too. Still from the demon." She pulled the collar of her shirt down a little way, just enough to show him the white bandage taped there. "That, too. Whatever Valentine did with that demon, the wounds are taking forever to heal. It's like a venom infection, but much worse. I hear Isabelle had trouble, too."

Jace made a face. "Yeah. And then someone recommended _yin fen_ to her to cure it." Since Aldertree had made Izzy's addiction public, there wasn't any point in holding the information back. "You're healing, though?"

Lydia nodded. "Slowly. I just came in for a check-up and heard you were here. Of course they didn't tell me what happened to you exactly…but someone hinted it had to do with Alec and you had a falling-out?"

Jace let himself sink back on the bed. He wanted to tell Lydia what was really going on. She deserved to know. She'd been so good to Alec when the two of them had been standing before the altar and Magnus had walked in…

But the camera may have been recording, and he couldn't. "We were on a mission. Alec shot me in the back."

"Oh Jace!" For a moment, Lydia looked as if she wanted to hug him, and only not knowing if that was going to be more painful for him or for her kept her from following up on it. "That's a terrible accident to happen!"

"Yeah." Jace put as much bitterness in the word as he could dredge up. "A perfect hit. Kept me alive but severed my spinal cord. I'm paralyzed, Lydia, and they say it's going to stay this way! Can you imagine what it's like, knowing you're unable to stand, unable to walk, unable to—" he swallowed the last word. He didn't know Lydia that well. Some subjects were not meant for discussion with random friends.

"No Jace." Lydia seemed genuinely pained to admit it. "I can't imagine what it's like. But I know that Alec is your _parabatai_. You will need him. You will need each other. Please, Jace - for both your sakes."

She seemed so genuinely distressed by the thought that he might never let Alec back into his life that he almost told her: that things weren't as they seemed, that he wasn't actually angry at Alec. Only knowing of the camera and the uncertainty of whether anyone was listening in on their conversation held him back. 

"I'll think about it," he said, reluctantly. His thoughts were already spinning again. If this was so important to Lydia, maybe they could make use of this. She could be essential in their reconciliation. It wasn't right to use her without her knowledge, but surely if she met with Alec and the others, they could fill her in. He'd warn them, so they'd know what to aim for. And then—

He'd need a way to contact Lydia. He couldn't talk to her openly in here. She didn't have a miraculously working phone and they couldn't give her one.

"Lydia, can you get me some paper and a pen or two? I … My grandmother is keeping Clary so busy with training and lessons, she'll hardly be able to drop by. If I had something to write, I could at least send her fire messages."

She smiled at that, broadly. "Of course, Jace! I'm sure they have plenty in the nurses' room. Give me a second, I'll get you some."

He didn't quite suppress a grin as Lydia went on her errand. Of course, Lydia Branwell would find it much easier to get anyone to cooperate with her than Jace formerly-Wayland, once thought to be Morgenstern and recently discovered to be a Herondale would.

*

The three of them were in high spirits they couldn't afford to wear openly on their faces when they entered the library of Idris early in the afternoon.

They'd made two allies.

Aline and Helen weren't in on what was going on – not yet in any case – but they had both eaten their fill of the pies and loved them. If they'd ever thought that Allie's insistence that the pies were charmed to not sit well with anyone who didn't mean them well was a joke, they'd learned better the day they'd caught one of Aldertree's people stealing a piece Alec had brought Max in the Institute infirmary.

The man had come claiming that he'd wanted to check up on the youngest Lightwood, and quickly made a beeline for the bathroom, which he hadn't left for an admirable amount of time.

He'd claimed they'd tried to poison him afterwards, but not gotten anywhere with that particular accusation since Maryse had given him a hard glare and eaten the remaining part of the offending pastry, declaring it absolutely delicious and not suffering any ill effects of it.

They weren't going to tell their old friend and her girlfriend any more than they couldn't avoid right now, since none of them wanted to put them in any danger, but it was good to know that there were some people they could consider confiding in.

Alec was amused to see Clary's astonishment at the library, with its rows upon rows of books, ranging from ancient leather-bound tomes and scrolls to modern mass-market paperbacks. They had settled on history for the day's theory lesson. Specifically, Izzy was going to walk Clary through some basics of the life of Jonathan Shadowhunter, while Alec was going to try and find anything he could about unusually long-lived Nephilim, Nephilim with odd powers and, barring that, look for obscure legends on Jonathan Shadowhunter and the angel Raziel.

He would have been the first to admit that that wasn't a very well-structured way to go about things, but they had to start somewhere, and if their assumption that they'd been raised and educated mostly on lies was accurate, then surely there had to be hints at the truth here and there. So he was going to look for outliers, cases where the lies hadn't worked so well, and anything banned into the world of Apocrypha.

They took their choice of book and sat in a niche with chairs and a low table off one of the building's many corridors, where they could talk at least in hushed voices.

It wasn't long before Alec grew restless.

At first, he blamed it on sitting still and reading when his body actually yearned for activity. They'd put Clary through some basic hand-to-hand combat and given her some moves to practice, but he would have given anything for a proper workout with Jace that would have left him tired and aching all over from the exertion – in the good way that followed a full-out training session.

Remembering that he might never do that kind of sparring with Jace again gave him a painful sting that he clamped down on immediately. That way lay feelings he didn't want to explore. Jace wasn't falling apart. He couldn't do so either.

But something kept tugging on his mind, and he kept twitching in his seat under the constant feeling of something being not quite right around him.

Izzy was already giving him looks across the small table, and he shrugged at her. He couldn't put his finger on it either.

He was just through with a chapter that read rather like something some mundane might have made up to read to their children, when he glanced up and did a double take. For a moment, he could have sworn there was a branch off of the corridor just a bit to their right that had never been there before.

He squinted at it over the edge of his book, but all he saw was a solid wall, painted the same pale yellow as all the other walls, unadorned and bare.

As he lowered his eyes to the page again, the branch was back at the outer-most corner of his eye. That was when he realized that what he was seeing wasn't actual a corridor leading off from the one they were facing, but the imprint of a power signature covering the opening.

It had always been the hardest to turn off the power vision Charlie had accidentally passed on to him around the edges of his field of vision.

He'd had it tuned down as far as it would go ever since their arrival in Alicante. With the runes inscribed thickly everywhere, he felt like their gleam would otherwise blind him sooner or later.

Now he turned it up carefully, allowing himself a better look at the corridor that wasn't supposed to exist.

He leaned towards his two companions.

"There's a concealed passage off this corridor," he whispered. "I can see the glamor on it, and it's driving me crazy."

They followed his eyes and frowned. Clearly, they weren't seeing anything.

Following a sudden idea, Alec took the pen Clary had been taking notes with and sketched a charm on both his palms. Could he share his power vision in the same way he could share tracking and other workings with his _parabatai_?

They'd been warned against experimenting with charms unless they were sure they knew what they were doing. Nevertheless, he added the shapes of the rune they used to share memories with each other. Simply adding a second one he knew wasn't the same as trying to build new ones or changing the function of ones that he did know, right?

He put one hand on either woman's wrist and looked back at the concealed passage, focusing on seeing the power of the runes that held the glamor, as well as the reflection of power shining from more deeply down that branch of the corridor, marking its course by the way it bounced off the walls.

"I see it," Izzy breathed, her voice barely audible.

"Why would you hide a hallway in a library?" Clary asked.

"Because you don't want people to find what's on the other end."

Alec released them and clamped down on the glow. "Either we find another place to sit, or we go check that thing out," he declared. "But sitting here and having it gleam at me is not an option."

Izzy was already packing up their things. "Find another place to sit? Are you kidding? This is a library. Libraries are supposed to encourage curiosity, right? I feel very encouraged right now."

Carefully checking up and down the corridor to make sure that no one saw them, they casually walked towards the unmarked section of wall that was not a wall at all. They were lucky that only few people came to this area of the building – which had been precisely why they had chosen that spot to begin with.

Putting a hand on the wall, Alec found that it felt perfectly solid.

He pushed, and the wall resisted.

It was a good glamor. Even knowing it was there, he couldn't convince his hand to go through it.

Clary looked in both directions again and backed up to the opposite wall. "Platform Nine and Three Quarters," she said. "Hogwarts Express, here I come." She closed her eyes and launched herself forward.

Alec and Izzy exchanged a glance as Clary dove through the wall as if it wasn't there at all – which, of course, it wasn't.

"Not a bad idea," Izzy conceded.

Alec had barely opened his mouth to respond when Clary's face appeared out of the wall before them. "Are you coming or what?"

That, at least, did the trick of convincing his mind that he wasn't looking at a solid piece of brick work.

*

Once through, the corridor looked exactly the way every other corridor in the library did. The glamored wall wasn't visible from this side.

With their hearing charms on to keep them from being surprised by anyone who was actually supposed to be in this part of the library, they proceeded cautiously, checking the labels on the doors they passed. Most of them were merely numbered.

"We should call this the Restricted Section," Izzy said. She had her phone out and the camera on to film their progress.

"What are you doing that for?" Clary wanted to know.

Izzy turned and pointed the phone at her friend. "To show to Jace later. He'll want to know what we did. Also, a fresh pair of eyes might spot things we didn't."

He probably would, and Clary wasn't sure that showing him solid evidence of the excitement they were having without him would be the wisest thing, but surely it wasn't a bad idea to go over the video again later and check for any details they might have missed.

They passed a door that was open a crack. By silent agreement, they pushed it wider and ducked into the room.

As befitted a library, it was filled with bookshelves. Like many libraries, this one combined books with artwork, and many of the reading rooms had sections of walls dedicated to paintings. The Restricted Section was no different.

Clary gravitated towards an oversized watercolor that she thought looked vaguely familiar.

"Brocelind Forest," Izzy said behind her.

"I think this is one of Imogen's," Clary noted. "She's shown me her work, and the style looks the same."

Izzy pointed at an elaborate set of initials in the lower right corner. "I'd say you're right."

Alec, in the meantime, was browsing the shelves. What had initially been a cursory glance at the spines of the folders kept here had become a more targeted search.

"Anything of interest?" Izzy asked.

"Interrogation records," Alec told her. He pulled out a thin folder. "Maryse Lightwood, née Trueblood. Circle stuff." He reached for the next one. "Robert Lightwood." That one he flipped open and glanced inside. He didn't seem to like what he read as he scanned the pages.

Izzy had joined him and picked up two more files that stood to the other side of the gap he had left. "I bet these are on the Benedict thing."

"The what?" Clary asked.

"Our great-great-great-great-grandfather," Alec said distractedly. "He liked to sleep with demons, which killed him. It wasn't nice. We're not generally given a lot of details about it."

Izzy was snapping pictures of the pages. "I've had it with no details," she declared.

Alec handed her the folder he was holding. "Do this one, too."

He moved along the alphabet, dropping to one knee to get at one of the lower shelves.

Just as he was coming up, another file in his hands, they heard the first steps.

They shared a quick glance, and Izzy stuck the folders back into the shelf as Alec crossed the room to the only other door, depressing the handle. It was locked.

"Now what?" their eyes said as they looked at each other, then around the room for a place to hide. The conversation their enhanced hearing picked up wasn't reassuring.

_"Ridiculous. No one's ever wandered in here before."_

_"Something disturbed the wards, though."_

_"Well, if there's anyone here, we'll find them. We'll just have to check every room along the way. It's not like they could get out anywhere."_

They were all thinking fast now, scanning the room for a hiding spot that could conceal all three of them, running through every glamor they could think of.

"We'll have to claim we didn't see a wall and decided to check out this corridor," Izzy whispered.

"Yeah," Alec returned in an equally low voice. "Because anyone's going to believe that."

"Next time we do anything like this, we bring Charlie." Izzy reached for her electrum bracelet. "She could have us out of here in a second… or just put them to sleep with a lullaby."

That made Clary blink. "Maybe we don't need Charlie."

The two searchers had worked through the first two rooms. The "all clear" had come from both sides and they'd started on the next set of doors. How many closed doors had there been before this one? Three on either side? Four? She wasn't sure.

"You can't portal us out," Alec said. "Your portals shatter and that'll tell them as surely as anything who's been here."

She shook her head and pulled her friends over to the large painting, where she reached out with one hand to push into the canvas. It went through with the same strange feeling she always got when she reached into a painting or a drawing. She remembered the time she'd caught Ragnor Fell hiding inside a painting. He'd been part of it, but still able to move. If they made themselves part of the scenery, they'd just have to run for it and take cover somewhere among the painted trees of Brocelind Forest until the air was clear. Ragnor had been able to watch her, so it was reasonable to assume they'd be able to see what was outside of the painting.

"How about we hide in there?"

Alec hesitated for only a fraction of a moment. "Let's do it."

The painting was large enough to let them stand before it side by side. Clary held out her hands, waiting for the other two to take them. "On three, and we jump," she said. "One – two – "

She didn't allow herself to think about what would happen if they collided heads-first with the wall.

Luckily, they didn't. The moment she felt the change in the air, she tucked in her head, trying to fall the way she'd been shown.

She managed to keep from hitting her head hard on anything, but that was as far as her skill extended at this time.

Alec and Izzy let go of her hands, rolled and were back on their feet in an instant, while Clary lay flat on the ground, the wind knocked out of her, staring into the canopy above.

"Ouch," she muttered as two dark-haired heads moved into her field of vision. "I think I hit a tree root."

Izzy extended a hand, and she took it to let her friend pull her to her feet.

"This isn't Brocelind Forest," Alec observed as he looked around. "Not even a painted version of it."

The forest did, indeed, not look painted at all. Of course, neither of them had any idea of whether paintings looked painted from the inside. Then again, they weren't inside the painting.

The place they had arrived in was familiar and strange to them at the same time. They'd been here before, though in different corners of it. Still, there was an unmistakable feeling to the place that left no room for doubt.

"Where's our exit?" Izzy asked, looking around. "And how did you get us here to begin with?"

Clary turned, slowly, trying to find anything that suggested to her where the painting was. All she could see was forest – or rather, the Wood.

"I don't know," she said, answering both questions. "But they did say Wild Powers can get into the Wood. Charlie goes through plants and sounds because she's a Bard. Allie's grandmother goes through plants and things she can see herself in because she's a seer. I'm a… well, artist-kind-of-thing. Whatever you call it. That picture was painted, and it was a forest. I was aiming for the picture, though, not… you know… the Wood."

"Well, you hit the Wood," Alec said. "Which serves the purpose of keeping us safe from pursuit, but what do we do now?"

Unbidden, Clary remembered what Charlie had told them about her first trip through the Wood: how she had almost died that time because she'd been wandering, lost, without food or water, until she'd found her cousin's Song and let it lead her out. She had no idea how the Songs worked. She didn't do music. What would be her equivalent as a painter?

Colors, maybe. But how would she find someone from here by their colors?

Alec picked up the file he had held until the last and brought along with him. It was never a good idea to leave anything lying around in the Wood.

Izzy didn't seem particularly disconcerted by their situation.

Rubbing her still-aching backside, Clary turned towards her. "Do you have any ideas, Iz?"

"Two of them, actually," Izzy said.

Alec looked at his sister with a grin. "I'm all for variety. What are they?"

"One, Clary makes us a portal home – or, I guess, to somewhere near Lake Lyn, and we hike home and say we were doing wilderness skills. Two, we call Charlie and ask her to come get us."

Clary stared at her. "You think the phones work in the Wood?"

"No," Izzy said. "I know the phones work in the Wood. Graham said so when we had to get you and Jace out." She pulled out her own and flipped it open. "Portal or Charlie?"

"Charlie," Clary said. "I need to talk to her about this Wood thing anyway."

*

Charlie stepped out from between a group of trees to their left. She was dressed in pajama bottoms and a tank top, and wearing an amused expression that was not at all what one expected from someone who had just been woken from a sound sleep – which was exactly what had happened, since Calgary was eight hours behind Idris.

"I've had a lot of strange calls with travelling requests from family," she said, looking them over, "but usually it's people wanting me to get them into the Wood, not out of it. How'd you manage to even get here?"

They told her, and a thoughtful air settled on top of her amusement.

"So you go through paintings. Interesting, but of limited use if you don't want to carry a large canvas with you wherever you go," she concluded. "Now, how do we get you out?"

"Can't you just… you know… like you always do it?" Clary asked.

"Yeah." Charlie put her hands on her guitar. "Can you give me a Song for Alicante? Because I don't have any."

That was something they hadn't considered. Charlie could leave the Wood anywhere and anytime she liked, as long as she had something to aim for. She'd never been to Idris, and she didn't know the first thing about it.

"I can follow Jace's Song," she said, playing the starting notes of Hand of Sorrow. "But I got the impression that showing up there, of all places, wouldn't go too well."

"Can you aim for a location?" Clary asked, hopefully.

The older woman made a vague motion with her hand. "Not one I've never seen before. So if that thing Alec is holding on to isn't a photo guide book of Idris…"

"I have a picture," Clary said. She pulled up her phone's gallery and opened the last photograph she'd taken. "This is the square right in front of Alec and Izzy's home. Will that work?"

Charlie studied the picture closely for a moment. She seemed to listen to it as much as she was looking at it. Eventually, she nodded. "Hold on."

All three of them reached out to touch her, and Charlie turned, striding forward—

—and deposited them squarely in a planting box placed in front of one of the houses. It was clearly losing the fight against winter, in spite of the runes placed around its edge, and having the four of them step on what remained of the plants wasn't helping either. Luckily, they were alone in the square. Otherwise, the sudden appearance of four people out of nowhere, one of them in sleepwear and wielding a guitar, might have led to questions they didn't want to answer.

"Thank you," Alec said as he hopped down into the square and held out a hand to Charlie. "Do you want to come in with us for a moment?"


	8. Chapter 8

_November 18 th, 2016_

Jace woke to the first light of morning falling through the window. He'd had another visit from the Silent Brothers, another application of healing runes hopefully powerful enough to cut through the demon ichor contamination, and another sad explanation – as far as telepathic contact could sound sad – that while he was healing there would be scarring, which still meant the same thing it had meant the day before.

The healing had exhausted him more than he liked to admit, and he had barely managed to send a last fire message to Clary to tell her good night before he nodded off.

Still a bit sleepy, he laid one hand flat against his stomach and slowly moved it down from there, probing for the line where feeling ceased to exist.

He knew it probably was a stupid thing to do. It wasn't going to be any different from yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that… but he still couldn't resist.

He froze when the tips of his fingers touched soaked fabric.

What was going on there? Had he somehow managed to injure himself in his sleep where he couldn't feel it?

He almost pulled away the blanket to check when he realized what had to have happened.

With an inward groan, he buried his face in the pillow, away from the camera, giving himself a moment to get the sudden surge of embarrassment under control.

Another thought quickly displaced that: The nurses couldn't see. Surely, they'd take it as proof that he couldn't take care of himself and they'd be back to the situation he'd started out from. He wasn't going to let that happen.

The Gales had shown them plenty of charms they knew no rune equivalent for during their stay in Calgary, and they'd memorized as many of them as they could. Allie's charms tended to be in the realm of 'too powerful for casual use' if one wanted to avoid drawing attention, but Charlie in particular had a plethora of useful everyday charms with plenty of practical applications.

One of the first she'd shown them, even before the ones that kept people from eavesdropping and rendered even a flyscreen perfectly impermeable to sight, had been one she'd called her special taproom charm.

"Play in bars and pubs, and you'll find there's hardly a night going by that no one spills beer where you don't want it," she'd said. "It removes all kinds of other stains and spills, too."

He fixed the design in his mind and blindly sketched it on himself under the covers now, noticing with some relief that a moment later, his pajamas felt dry. Dry - Not dried. He shifted his position a little and repeated the procedure on the sheets below him, then for good measure on the underside of the blanket.

Once he was done, he activated the cleansing runes on his palms.

Then he gave himself another few moments of hiding in his pillow before he carefully teased out the phone from under it, checking it for messages from the night before and glancing at the time. He'd slept for about eight hours. Eight hours clearly was too long.

 _Is there an alarm clock around the house, and can you have Clary bring it to me?_ he texted Alec. _Overslept and don't want to set my phone. They'd probably notice._

Now he could only hope that Alec didn't want details on what exactly he meant by having "overslept". He didn't think he was quite up to discussing that particular incident with his _parabatai_.

For the moment, he was deeply grateful that they mostly felt the echo of each other's pain, but not of other sensations.

Even with the charms, he wanted a bath now, and then change into fresh pajamas, which he didn't have at hand. Track pants and a t-shirt would do, but how was he going to explain why he wanted his things washed already?

He could probably spill his breakfast sufficiently to make it a necessity, he figured after a moment.  They surely wouldn't appreciate the extra work, but if he went about it thoroughly enough, he might even get fresh sheets on the bed.

*

"You spent some time in the library yesterday, didn't you, Clary?" Imogen asked over breakfast.

Clary looked up from her plate with some surprise. Until that moment, she'd thought the woman had been deeply engrossed in reading her morning mail and either forgotten that she was there at all, or simply nothing to say to her now that the matter of her training was settled.

She'd come home late the night before, sweaty enough from the run Izzy had turned their trip back to Herondale Manor into to insist that she needed to take a shower at once and tired enough to drop into bed right after that.

She'd spent several hours of the last afternoon with Charlie, slipping into and out of the Wood and trying to see, feel and latch on to people's Colors the way Charlie did to their Songs. At least she thought she'd started to develop a bit of a feel for what she was looking for to begin with. Today, they were planning to return to the Fairchild house and go through Jocelyn's finished or mostly finished paintings in the hope that there was something large-formatted enough with a motive she could use.

Otherwise, she'd have to find a large canvas and start painting a matching scene. Then, hopefully, Charlie could help her figure out how to find the painting from inside the Wood. It still wasn't going to be as helpful as Charlie's ability to go through between sounds, but if they had a reliable way to get into and out of the house with no one the wiser and no portal shards left behind, they'd surely find uses for it.

It was still six weeks to Christmas. If she found time to spare, Clary hoped she'd be able to finish a few paintings until then. No one would think it strange if she was producing gifts for friends, she hoped. If she could at least leave one with Magnus and one with the Gales, they'd have two exits in strategically relevant locations.

She'd been thinking about that, quite happy that Imogen wasn't expecting her to keep up some useless conversation over breakfast.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "Studying history books. It was on the schedule." Was she sounding defensive? She shouldn't sound defensive. She couldn't sound guilty. She had a hunch that she knew exactly why Imogen was asking her this specific question, and she really couldn't raise any suspicions.

"Did you notice anything strange while you were there?" Imogen asked, looking at Clary over the edge of the letter she'd been reading. "People acting unusually, or even just someone or something looking out of place? Or hear anything that seemed strange?"

Clary shook her head. "I don't think I'd've realized if people were acting strange. I have no idea how people usually act in the library of Idris. I wouldn't have been able to follow most conversations because I can barely introduce myself in the local language at the moment. Izzy had to read out most of the texts to me. So we spent most of our time in one of those niches away from the reading rooms and didn't see a whole lot of people. And I don't think I've ever seen that many old books in one place! I didn't pay much attention to the people anyway. Why?"

"There was an alarm at the library yesterday," Imogen said, tapping her letter. "It is suspected that someone triggered some wards by trying to enter the classified section. _Unfortunately_ , due to the classified nature of that area, there's no camera stream from there." It was clear that she thought this was a stupid thing to do. "The section was searched and no one was found, so the attempt must have been unsuccessful. But well – there was a chance you might have seen something without knowing that you did."

"I can ask Izzy," Clary offered, adding after a moment: "And Alec."

Imogen sighed. "You must let go of your anger towards that boy, Clary. Jace will surely want to be in contact with his _parabatai_ soon enough, and then you cannot stand between them."

"I'm trying," Clary said, putting all the defiance in her voice that she could muster. "But then I think of Jace, and…" She sighed. "I'll try to do better."

Speaking of doing better, she definitely had to make sure to see Jace earlier today. By the time she'd managed to get to the hospital the night before, she'd barely had time to say hello and share a single kiss before she'd been thrown out again.

Of course the Silent Brothers took precedence over Jace's girlfriend…

She spotted the spark of fire in the air above her just in time and reached up to catch the page as it floated down. She was getting better at that, though she still had a way to go before she'd be plucking fire messages from the air in the same off-handed manner the other Nephilim did.

She smiled as she read the missive.

Jace apparently had every intention of continuing their ongoing exchange by fire message from the last day.

Nothing wrong with that…

*

Izzy deliberately picked a path that took them through the more lively parts of Alicante on the way from Herondale Manor to the Lightwood townhouse. As much as she hated giving in to his demands, she couldn't give her father reason to suspect she was avoiding the public.

It did take them past a number of shops, and she took the opportunity to point Clary to the most relevant ones, including a brief explanation on the words written over doors and across windows.

On other stretches, they put in as much speed as they could, weaving around passers-by and dodging groups of children.

At one point they stopped in the middle of a square, and she looked at Clary with a grin. "Any idea where we are right now?"

Her friend stood for a moment, panting somewhat and trying to catch her breath. She did look around, though.

"That way's the Gard," Clary said after a while, pointing. "I think."

"Almost," Izzy said.

Clary did a quarter-turn. "And I think your home is that way?"

Izzy made a vague motion with her hand. "I think it's time you learned to ask locals for the way," she said. "Can't have you get lost in Alicante and need rescuing every so often, can we?"

They both laughed at that, and Clary dropped on the edge of a sculpture's base. "Fine," she said. "How do I say 'Excuse me, do you know the way to the Lightwoods' residence?"

*

When they finally reached their home, Izzy found Alec precisely as she had left him when she'd set out to collect Clary: Sitting cross-legged on a sofa in the living room, studying the file he had stolen from the library the day before.

They'd browsed the photographed files on their parents together, and forwarded the images to Jace. There hadn't been much. It seemed that Maryse and Robert Lightwood had, indeed, as Hodge had told Jace that day, cut a deal: Disclosing what information they had, in return for the most lenient of punishments for their involvement with the Circle. 

They'd been stripped of a single rune, which was the Circle one. That almost looked like a reward, more than a punishment, since it had removed the visible blemish that proved that they had once followed Valentine.

The other file was much thicker than theirs taken together. It belonged to a man who'd been their own age at the time, a young Nephilim from an unimportant family, not particularly well connected and not wealthy enough to make a difference.

Whether the former Circle members had coordinated and chosen that young man as their scapegoat, to blame for everything they weren't going to admit to doing, or whether it had been the inquisitor's idea so she could get away with the lesser sentences she'd intended to impose on the others, they couldn't tell.

Alec had wanted to write to their mother then and there, demanding answers, but Izzy had managed to convince him to wait.

The man the file referred to was dead. Rushing into this wasn't going to bring him back, and it was a good idea to have as much information as they could before they confronted either of their parents with anything at all.

Her brother seemed to be determined to learn that file by heart. Izzy couldn't blame him. She'd read it through twice, too, unwilling to believe what she was reading there; unable to imagine what it must have been like for Hodge to be placed under the control of two of the people who had betrayed him; wondering at how he had still managed to train and prepare them, those people's children, for battle. It would have been so easy for him to pronounce them ready when they weren't; to pay their parents back a little of the pain he'd suffered by way of indirectly taking one or several of their children from them.

He hadn't. Instead, he had given them the best combat education they could have wished for, always ready to teach them another trick, a new move, a special maneuver that could give them an edge.

"We have time to run to the Fairchild house and look for some canvases before it's time for lunch," Izzy said when Alec glanced up. "Put the file away, big brother. Have you copied it at least? We need to return it as soon as we can get in and out of that painting on demand – before anyone notices it's gone."

"Don't you think they've already noticed?" Alec asked. "I'm surprised they didn't just check their camera feed and show up here right away to demand to know what we were doing in there." He did close the file and place it on the table, however.

"Apparently the people who usually frequent the classified rooms don't like to be recorded." Clary quickly filled him in on what Imogen had told her.

His eyebrows went up a little at that. "No, I didn't see anything unusual," he said when she was done. "You can tell Imogen that. Right. Canvases. Let's go."

With that, he walked out of the living room and down the corridor.

Instead of leaving through the front door, however, he started up the stairs.

Clary looked after him with a frown. "Did we forget anything?"

"No," he called down from above. "But we may as well turn it into exercise. Let's take the roofs."

"Oh yeah!" Izzy said, a light shining in her eyes. She took the steps two at a time. "That's a wonderful idea. Come on, Clary! It'll be fun!"

Clary seriously doubted that. In fact, she found the Lightwood siblings' enthusiasm about moving three floors above the ground very much out of place. Still, she followed.

The upper-most floor of the house was an attic, filled with broken furniture, boxes of old toys, some of which must have come from generations before Robert and Maryse's, and all the odds and ends that collected over centuries of a family continually inhabiting the same building. They must have sorted through things now and then and disposed of some of them, she figured, or else there wouldn't be any space to move.

There was a large, massive wardrobe against one gable wall, just below the small opening towards the top that let in a single beam of sunlight, and a very slight breeze.

"I think your window's broken," Clary noted.

Alec and Izzy glanced up. "That's supposed to be open," they said, almost as one. Izzy continued: "If you don't ventilate a room like this, you get mold. You don't want mold."

"Doesn't it rain in?"

"The roof protrudes a bit, so mostly no. And when it does, then not a whole lot."

Alec's eyes had lowered from the window to the piece of furniture below it. "I wonder if some of those old clothes would be sellable as costumes." He seemed to be thinking out loud. "It's not right that Clary provides all of our secret spending money, and it's not like anyone will need those."

"Maybe," Izzy agreed. She was hoisting open a roof window and pulling herself up through the opening. "Ah… I'd forgotten. There's always a breeze up here."

"If that's supposed to make me feel any better about this, it's not working," Clary declared. "There was a breeze down there as well."

Alec had come up behind her, chuckling. "After you," he offered gallantly. "Do you need a leg-up?" Linking the fingers of his hands, he showed her what he meant.

Clary shook her head. "Don't think so."

She grabbed the frame, trying to imitate what Izzy had done, and jumped.

It took her a few tries.

Finally, sitting next to her friend on the tiled roof, she had to admit that the view from up here was amazing. Also, Izzy had been right: there was a cold wind blowing.

"Have you done this often?"

Alec pulled himself up after her and crouched on the slope to push the window back in place. "All the time," he told her. "Don't worry. No one's going to take us for burglars. Worst case, they'll think we're some kids trying to sneak out if we do this at night. This time of the day? Everyone knows people train."

"On other people's roofs," Clary said.

Alec shrugged. "Anywhere that's convenient. Roofs are convenient. Fire message for you."

Clary grabbed for the page that came floating down and read Jace's message before she fished a pencil stub out of her pocket and scrawled her answer below.

_A &I taking me to the FC house by roofs. May not be able to catch messages. Love, Clary._

Izzy turned, putting her knee against the roof as she did so, so she ended up with five points of her body in contact with the tiles. "You turn into a four-legger on the roof," she told Clary. "Hands, toes when you go up or down. Don't try to stand on your whole foot or you'll slide. If you do, most of these houses are built together, so you'll just end up in the gutter between them. Where they aren't, you'll still have time to hold on to the gutter, but be careful. It's made of metal, and the edges can be sharp."

"So I can either fall to my death or I can slice off my fingers and then fall to my death? Lovely," Clary said, but she did maneuver around to imitate Isabelle's posture.

Alec pivoted on the balls of his feet until he faced the length of the roof. "When you go sideways, you can walk, but keep your body down low." He showed her how, staying crouched over as he moved forward with an ease that shouldn't have been possible on the roof of a building. "If you stand up straight, you have to fight the wind every step."

He pointed downwards. "See those little fences between the gables, right above the gutter? They'll keep you from going off the edge on the side, so if you need to be at the end of a building, do it down there, not up by the ridge."

"They're really meant to keep things from going over the edge and killing people down there if there's a storm and larger bits are blown onto the roofs," Izzy clarified. "Since everything slides down and is washed one way or the other in the gutter when there's a lot of rain."

"I should put on an agility charm," Clary muttered, which drew a laugh from the other two.

"Neither of us have," Alec said. "But if you feel the need, go for equilibrium. It'll help you keep your balance."

"I was going to suggest Surefootedness," Izzy said.

Her brother shrugged. "Either or both, or just get the full experience on your own. You'll see: It's not hard."

*

"Not hard" may not have been accurate, but it was at least not as bad as Clary had expected. Staying in the middle of the roofs helped. While she couldn't see how far away the ground was, it was easier to just focus on finding places to put her hands and feet as she scrambled up slopes and slid down the other side. She felt incredibly clumsy whenever she compared herself to Alec and Izzy, though, who moved as if they were made for this kind of terrain, and waited for her half-kneeling, half-crouching on the tiles, looking for all the world as if they'd be just as happy to take out a book and start reading right where they were.

Some roofs actually had steps integrated into the tiles. Clary found that those were her favorites, though her friends declared them 'boring'.

Then they reached the first place where there was a gap between two houses, and Clary almost balked as Izzy showed her the right way to jump, making sure she'd neither overbalance on the first, nor the second roof.

Though the Lightwoods didn't seem to think there was any real risk of anyone – including Clary – falling, they did show her the rune that enabled them to jump down from high places without breaking anything upon impact.

Clary felt a little better for it when she had put it on as a charm.

Eventually, they came to a halt, perched on the ridge of a building Clary was sure she remembered from below for the distinctive green color of its tiles that made it stand out from the surrounding red.

She knew which direction they had to go from here, but they had reached the end of the row of houses, and while previously there had always been other buildings they could get to, this one seemed like a dead end.

"Now what?" she asked.

Alec was grinning again, in a way she had come to learn meant that he was enjoying the exercise immensely, but she probably wouldn't. Still, she couldn't help a grin of her own as she imagined him and Jace on the roofs, quickly gliding over the tiles side by side…

That must have been a sight to remember.

She wished Jace could have been there with them right then, joking and showing her the best ways to proceed on different materials and angles.

Izzy had her back pressed against the chimney and straightened slowly until she stood upright. She spread her arms to either side and let the wind tousle her hair. "I love it up here," she declared

"I don't," Clary said. With a little surprise, she realized that while she still would have preferred to walk on the ground, she disliked the roofs a lot less than she had thought she would. "But the question remains: Where do we go from here?"

"Where do we need to go?" Izzy asked her.

Clary pointed. This time, at least she was sure. They had to get off the back of the house and, if they were going to continue their way on the roofs, up one of the next row.

Alec gave her a nod. "See that tree?"

"Which tree?"

Clary scuttled closer to the eaves, hoping that she was going to spot another tree in addition to the one she could see if only she got a little closer.

She didn't.

"Seriously, Alec?"

He nodded. "Seriously, Clary."

He moved, far more gracefully than she could hope to appear in this situation, until he was just a few steps away from the edge, where he let go with his hands and straightened, for the first time going beyond the crouch he had shown Clary as the preferred manner of moving sideways.

Once he was up, he took a few quick steps, as close to a run as one could get on a roof slope, and launched himself off the edge, flinging his body into the bare branches.

He landed on one that was several times the circumference of the balance beams they'd used for training before, catching the impact with bent knees and palms flat against the bark. Turning, he waved at them.

"You sure that featherfall charm is going to catch me if I fall?" Clary asked, somewhat suspiciously.

Izzy nodded. "You won't need it, but if you did need it, it would. Do you want to go next, or last?"

Not at all, Clary thought. Not at all would have been a great option. 'Not at all' didn't seem to be on the menu, though.

"The sooner I get it over with, the better," she decided.

There was no denying it that the flash of adrenalin that ran through her as she went airborne for a few moments was exhilarating. For that fleeting moment, she thought she knew what it was that Alec and Izzy found so great about roof-running.

The next instant, she hit a branch, hard, and felt the bark scrape her hands as she scrambled for purchase. She steadied herself before she dared let go of her breath.

Alec nodded at her approvingly.

"Watch out!"

That was all the warning they got before Izzy joined them. Clary was surprised by how little she felt her branch move under the impact.

"Have any of these ever broken off?" she asked as she followed Alec's instructions on where to climb.

"Once they reach this size?" Izzy asked. She was standing upright and looked entirely relaxed, as if she had plenty of space on either side of her. "Surely not if all they have to deal with is the three of us. You can hold a ball on these with dancers and all."

*

They had made it almost to the Fairchild house. Presently, they were moving along the roofs on the opposite side of the street, quickly approaching their destination.

After the transfer by tree that had involved moving out onto limbs that were small enough to swing under their weight to get to the other roof, Clary had started to feel a lot more confident on the entirely solid and unmoving tiles.  She'd even managed to make a jump from a third-floor to a second-floor roof without jarring her ankles.

She was no longer moving as close to the center of the roofs as she could, but rather following Alec and Izzy on the course that provided the best footing. Because even the best roof trusses tended to sag a bit in the middle after centuries, causing additional wear from water running off in that area, that course typically did not go up and down halfway along the building.

She'd caught herself glancing down into the street a few times, marveling at the different perspective.

Now, she looked ahead, checking out the Fairchild house – her house – from a small distance.

As her gaze slid down the front into the street, she almost missed a step.

Her fingers closed on the metal bracket she'd just put her hand on, and she stopped her movement, turning sideways to half-sit where she was. In spite of the season, the roof actually felt comfortably warm in the light of the sun just before noon.

Noticing that she was no longer with them, Alec and Izzy turned.

She brought a finger to her lips, and instead of calling out, they slid back down to her level.

She pointed.

There on the sidewalk, just in front of the door to the Fairchild building, stood a tall man with blond hair, dressed in leather gear not dissimilar from what they were wearing. He had a hand on the door handle and was clearly trying to get inside – an effort made useless by the extra charms Clary had put on the door as they had left the day before.

Now all three of them were frozen motionless, pressed to the tiles to watch without being seen.

A set of quickly sketched charms to enhance their vision confirmed their shared suspicion without a doubt: They knew that face.

None of them had ever seen it in the flesh before, but not so long ago, Magnus had been held and tortured by a man with Shadowhunter runes. Based on his description, Clary had drawn a portrait of the man, whom none of them had known – but there he was now, trying to break into Clary's house.

They watched as he applied an unlock rune to the door, then put his shoulder to the wood. The door didn't budge.

He stood back and glanced around.

Alec moved one hand towards his shoulder, as if he was reaching for the bow he didn't carry.

Another two attempts at breaking in remained unsuccessful, but in the end, it was the arrival of Clary's neighbors that sent the man on his way.

He stepped back from the door the moment he noticed the couple approach.

The hearing charms they applied cut in on the last syllables of what must have been a question about what he was doing there.

"Clarissa is in town now," he said. "The house is her property and she will surely want to see it. I'm an old friend of the family's and thought I'd drop by and make sure it's safe. The building hasn't been used for 19 years after all".

The answer was polite, though restrained. The neighbors did not seem convinced. That was hardly surprising. He didn't look old enough to have been a friend of Jocelyn's, or Valentine's. Definitely not Valentine's. She couldn't see Valentine wasting any time on children he didn't plan to experiment on, and that man couldn't be more than ten years or so older than they were.

Still, there was something odd that she couldn't quite put her finger on until they'd made it to the back of the house, where they used the downpipe from the gutter to reach ground level.

It hit her the moment her feet touched the dry grass.

"He said Clarissa."

"What?" Izzy dropped down from above, catching herself easily on bent knees.

"He can't be an _old friend_ , but he must be one of Valentine's recent cronies. He called me Clarissa. Only Valentine called me that."

The other two nodded.

"And there we'd thought everyone who was associated with him had been caught." Alec sighed. "Clary, as much as I hate to admit it, I think this is where we need to let Imogen know something is going on. Just that there was the guy and what he said – nothing else."

*

Lydia moved around her kitchen. Lunch would take the form of a sandwich today – again. It may not have been what her mother would have approved of, but it was reasonably easy to make with only one hand, and her right arm was definitely not going to be any help in cooking right now. She'd spent considerable time that morning putting it through its exercises, and it was stubbornly, viciously refusing any kind of cooperation until further notice now.

At least she thought it was improving somewhat.

Possessed by the demon Valentine had engineered and sent into the Institute, Raj had twisted her arm with inhuman strength, ripping her shoulder and elbow apart and leaving both joints so damaged that there had been talk, among the more adventurous of the medics, that she might be better off if a transfer to a mundane hospital could somehow be organized, where the ruined joints could have been replaced with implants.

Of course, that idea hadn't been actually fit to be put into practice from the beginning. Mundanes tended to run blood tests, and the Nephilims' angel blood showed up in those and was impossible to explain away.

More than that, the venom infection in the set of holes Raj had left above her heart had put an end to any plans that didn't involve her under supervision of the Silent Brothers. The wounds were just too close to vital organs.

She'd heard Izzy had tried to cure her own venom infection – in a far less precarious location of her anatomy – with yin fen. Lydia wasn't sure if that had worked, or if Izzy merely had an incredible constitution and fought off the infection on her own, but she had caught herself thinking a few times that maybe going through the withdrawal afterwards would be worth it.

It was too late now anyway. The infection was gone, though the wounds were still healing slowly, leaving behind thick scars she would bear to the end of her life. That wasn't an issue. Scars happened. They were part of any Shadowhunter's life.

By far the worse issue was that the infection had spread in her blood, impairing healing in all her injuries - which was why her arm was still as bad as it was.

She spotted the spark of fire before her, and put her meal aside to fish the message out of the air.

It was from Jace – of course. He seemed to be very bored indeed. He'd written her a few messages since the last day, and she'd replied to him, trying not to scrawl too badly with her left hand.

Thinking of Jace certainly helped put her own condition into perspective. It might be months before she was fit to be back in the field, but at least she knew she was going to return to the field. Jace was facing permanent disability and retirement at the age of nineteen.

 _They won't let me have a look at my full file_ , he'd written. _Do you have any idea who I could talk to about that?_

That file. It was so important to him.

She didn't quite understand why – what could it possibly tell him that the medics couldn't? – , but he'd mentioned it often enough to make his point clear.

Given the situation he was in, she didn't understand why they didn’t just let him see it if it was what he needed to come to terms with his condition.

With a small sigh to herself, made a decision.

 _What if I could get you that file?_ She wrote back. Her security clearance was probably high enough to pull a file and make a printout.

 _Any favor that's mine to give_ , Jace's answer came, written so fast that even Jace's otherwise impeccable handwriting was starting to look untidy. Oddly, knowing that Jace Herondale didn't _need_ to write in a cursive that could have been put in a calligraphy book, felt nice.

_Any favor?_

_I won't do anything that'll hurt Clary or my family, but anything else._

Why did he even think that someone might want him to hurt someone? She'd ask him that question at some point, but this was not the time.

Right now, she was going to return to the hospital and find an unsupervised computer with a printer attached.

 


	9. Chapter 9

She had reconsidered her initial idea by the time she made it to her destination.

If Jace was right and they were keeping the file from him on purpose, there was a risk she was going to trigger some flag if she called it from any old computer. She still wasn't sure she believed there was any such thing going on, but at the same time, Jace seemed sincere about the situation.

She'd go in and _ask_ for the file. She'd say she had an idea of finding Jace a job in administration, and that she needed to get some basic data on his condition.

It wasn't ideal, but she'd at least get an idea of how they'd react.

Lydia walked into the foyer and was about to accost the woman behind the reception desk to ask her whom she could talk to about Jace, when a face that was only too familiar to her right now appeared from a corridor.

Doctor Ryan Blackmark was the man in charge of her treatment, and he came right towards her as soon as he spotted her.

"Miss Branwell," he greeted her with a smile. "Were you coming to see me? Is your arm giving you trouble? I was just on my way out, but I can take a few minutes…"

She returned his smile. "No, it's – as well as can be expected," she insisted. "Actually, I was just coming to see a friend. Jace Herondale. No reason to postpone your break."

Another change of plan, she thought as he left, satisfied that she wasn't going to talk to another medic and complain about his work.

"You can't see Mr. Herondale right now." The woman in charge of the reception desk had apparently listened in and checked her computer. "Brother Matthias is with him at the moment."

Lydia gave her the sweetest expression she could muster. "I'll wait," she said. "I know where his room is, don't worry."

With that, she turned to walk deeper into the building.

She turned down a branch before she reached the hallway where Jace's room was, jogging up a flight of stairs and heading straight for Blackmark's office. She knocked, just in case he had left some student in his room who would be surprised to see her burst in.

When there was no response, she pulled out her stele and sketched an override rune on the lock.

The office was familiar to her. She'd sat across from that desk more times than she cared to remember in the last weeks. This time, she walked around it, pulling out the chair and tapping the screen with the end of her stele.

A password field appeared, the keyboard displayed below it.

Great.

Well, many people didn't memorize their passwords. Especially not if they had an office, with a desk only they used.

She lifted the desk pad and peered beneath it.

"Stupid, Doctor Blackmark," she muttered. "Very stupid."

There, taped to the desk, was a combination of letters and numbers that she typed in.

The prompt window disappeared, giving way to his welcome screen.

She pulled up the patient database and ran a search for Jace. Scaling down the view so she could fit two pages on one and use less paper, she hit 'print'. As she waited, she skimmed the file on the screen.

What she read made her frown. It seemed that they were running tests on Jace's blood that had nothing to do with his injury, and everything with studying his extra angel blood. She also noticed there was an objection from the head medic in New York noted right towards the top of where his most recent injury was described. He had not approved of the portal.

The printer spit out the last page, and she took them, folding them and sliding them between her arm and its sling before pulling the side of her jacket with the loosely dangling sleeve over it.

She remembered to delete the search history and log back out before she returned to the door, where she stood and listened for a moment to make sure she wasn't going to run into anyone when she left.

*

Jace hadn't realized the flaw in his plan until it had almost been too late.

Anyone putting fresh sheets on his bed would surely notice that there was a cell phone hidden under his pillow. He couldn't leave it there when someone was going to change the sheets on the bed. He couldn't take it with him, because he intended to change and have his pajamas put in the laundry. He had no way he could drop it into the drawer of the bedside cabinet without being caught on camera - the camera of which he still wasn't sure whether it recorded or not.

Needing to find a solution quickly, while the nurse was taking away the breakfast tray he had accidentally upended, and finding someone who could clear him for actually taking the bath he'd just requested, he'd gone for the only thing he could find: pushing it through between the mattress and the bed frame, hoping the phone was smart enough to roll into the shadow under the bed and that no one was going to take the opportunity to sweep under there.

He'd have to think about how to retrieve it later.

The sound it made when it hit the floor had been awfully loud in Jace's ears.

The bath, though approved – apparently his wound was sufficiently healed to be submerged in water – was far from the enjoyable thing he'd secretly been hoping for.

It had started out with the nurse bringing in a wheelchair. For a moment, Jace had wondered what that was meant for, and then mentally kicked himself. Clearly he couldn't walk to wherever the closest bathtub was.

It wasn't so much the chair he resented – he told himself that he'd better get used to _that,_ because that was what getting around was going to look like in his immediate future, until he could get his back fixed. It was being lifted from the bed and put into it.

Surely there must be a way that he could have done that without help? They hadn't even left him the time to suggest that.

More than just the indignity of being, once again, treated like no more than a doll to be handled as the owner pleased, being lifted up sent a surge of adrenalin through him because it felt so _wrong_. The nurse had slid one arm behind his back and the other under his knees to get him off the bed, but feeling only the former, he had several moments of fighting his body's conviction that it couldn't possibly be horizontal like that.

Then he was sitting properly upright for the first time since the arrow had hit him, and he needed a moment to let a sudden feeling of light-headedness pass. Always efficient and never one for asking a great many questions, the nurse started pushing him forward, and he grabbed for the armrests, feeling entirely disconnected from the chair below him and strangely floating against the backrest.

The room with the bathtub was a simple, sterile affair, and the tub barely deserved its name. At least there was water in it.

He had just noticed that he had no idea how he was going to get out of his pajama pants without falling out of the chair, when the nurse reached out to help him undress – or rather: to undress him without involving Jace in the process a great deal – and he realized that the man had absolutely no intention of letting him relax in the tub on his own.

'Taking a bath' had sounded desirable. 'Being bathed' did not.

"I'm perfectly capable of washing myself," Jace had told the nurse. "I'd thank you very much if you kept your hands off."

The man had shrugged and muttered something about wasting time, but he'd stood back.

He'd intervened the moment Jace had reached for the tap to add hot water to the tub, though.

"I like it warmer," Jace had insisted.

The nurse had shaken his head firmly. "The water needs to stay as it is."

Apparently, as Jace learned in the small lecture he received for the next few minutes, his body was going to have trouble adjusting to sudden changes of heat for a while. Since his injury was relatively low, he stood a chance of getting over that, but this was too early to submerge himself in truly hot water.

He gritted his teeth and promised himself he was going to spend some time googling that – and other things – as soon as he was back in his bed and had gotten his phone back.

Leaning back, he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to forget where he was. It didn't work.

Just a few minutes later, he gave up and let the nurse lift him from the tub and help him dry off. There really wasn't any point in resisting – he had no idea how he was supposed to reach his feet without falling over right now – but he still would have liked a bit more control about what happened when.

"How do I get back into the bed on my own?" he asked when they returned into his room. He tried to just let his hands rest on the armrests without grabbing them, but it took some effort to convince himself he wasn't going to fall if he didn't.

The nurse seemed amused. "Out of that chair? Not at all. It's not made for that."

Great. Just great.

Jace forced his body to relax as he was transferred onto the bed.

"Can you bring a different chair next time then?"

"You'll surely get one soon enough," he was told. "Not my job, though."

Then he was left alone in his freshly made bed, his phone hopefully still where he had dropped it but, for the moment, unreachable for him.

He sent a fire message to Clary, then another one. Dropping his phone had been a stupid move.

Clary's next reply made him grin. So Alec and Izzy were taking her roof running? He could just about imagine that. He would have loved to be there with them…

The thought of roof running triggered another idea. He might not be able to join his friends up there, but there was no reason he couldn't exercise.

First things first, he told himself. He needed to see if he could re-acquire the ability to sit upright without holding on to something.

It took a little effort, but he managed to push himself up until he was sitting on the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him. Carefully making sure of his balance without activating his equilibrium rune – it was always better to learn things without rune support – he raised up one hand, trying to get a feel for how stably he was sitting.

He counted silently, swapping hands after a minute and counting again.

Next, he graduated himself to letting go with both hands, using only his trunk muscles to balance himself.

It didn't take very long until he realized that he was actually in far less of a danger of falling over than he had expected. He'd gotten all the way through carefully leaning sideways, forwards and back to determine the points where he would overbalance by the time his back started to hurt, and he decided it was time for a break.

Assuming they were done on the roofs by now, he wrote another message to Clary, and then one to Lydia.

Their exchange didn't take very long. He felt a little guilty at involving her without filling her in on the details first, but he really couldn't do that while he was stuck in the hospital. With a little luck, Alec would have had a chance to talk to her already, and the only reason he didn't know was because like a complete idiot, he had dropped his phone where he couldn't reach it.

He didn't get a lot of time to think about that, since the arrival of his lunch offered some distraction. He ate with more of an appetite than he'd had in days – it seemed that the exercise he'd put in, little as it had been, was making itself felt.

Lunch was followed by a visit of a Silent Brother.

"So when will you be done with me?" Jace asked when he had completed his examination and application of more runes. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he looked into the eyeless face expectantly, as if staring a Silent Brother down wasn't an entirely useless endeavor.

 _Soon_ , the Brother, who Jace thought was Brother Matthew, said. Most people thought that all Silent Brothers looked alike, which was probably due to the fact that they avoided looking at them any more closely than they could help it, but Jace was reasonably sure this was the only one of the three he had seen since he'd been brought to the hospital who had removed his eyes entirely. He regarded Jace in whatever way Silent Brothers used to see. _You have been experimenting._

Jace shrugged. "I was bored."

He hadn't been sure if the statement had been meant to be approving or chastising, but he was nearly convinced that the next telepathic message held some amusement. _Keep experimenting._

Right, Jace thought when Brother Matthew had left. He still needed to get his phone back. That should be one of his next experiments. First, though…

He dug his hand into the fabric of his pants and dragged his legs sideways one by one, shifting and pulling alternatingly until he was sitting on the edge of his bed. That felt surprisingly stable, and not nearly as wobbly as he had expected.

Starting with a few careful stretches, he gained confidence in his ability to balance himself with every second. He should find some weights to practice with. He could definitely make sure the upper half of his body stayed in shape while he was waiting. For now, in the absence of more ordinary training equipment…

He braced his hands against the mattress on either side of him and pushed up, trying to lift himself off the bed. The exercise was made more difficult because the material gave way under him. 

Just as he was trying to come up with a solution for that, someone knocked on the door.

Great. If that was Clary, she could get his phone back for him.

It was Lydia.

Surprise registered on her face as she saw what he was doing. It quickly turned into a broad smile.

"Jace! You're up!"

"You have an interesting definition of 'up'," Jace said. "But I guess I'm up-per than I was?" He relaxed his arms and shook them out, happy to find he really didn't feel the need to hold on to anything anymore. "Is your arm giving you trouble again?"

"No more than usual. I came to see you." She fished in her bag and pulled out a book. "I brought you the reading material you asked for. Don't tear the cover. Last time I lent someone a book, I got it back in shreds."

He took the object she handed him, giving the title a cursory glance. It wasn't the kind of book he'd usually have read – though admittedly, his taste in fiction had also changed somewhat since their encounter with the Gales and their endless supply of mundane fantasy novels –, but luckily that was irrelevant anyway. There was something stuck between the dust jacket and the book, and he thought he knew what it was.

"Thanks." The smile he gave her was genuine. "I owe you a favor now."

Lydia looked at him earnestly. "Make up with Alec, Jace." 

He sighed. "Lyd…"

"No, Jace," she cut him off. "I mean it. You need to forgive him. He wouldn't have hurt you on purpose."

Jace closed his eyes for a moment. "I know," he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Have you talked to Alec recently?"

She shook her head. "I haven't managed to catch him and Isabelle since they arrived."

"You should," Jace told her. "And when you see them, tell… tell Alec to come see me."

"Promise you won't throw anything at him?"

He pointed at the cup on the bedside cabinet. "They're still keeping me on plastic just in case."

They talked for a while before Lydia took her leave. Jace had planned to go back to exercising as much as he could, but his mind kept going towards the folded paper hidden in the book. He wanted to read it. He wanted to send it to the Gales as requested, to get a definite answer. He needed his phone for that.

He had no idea if Clary had texted him to let him know when she was coming, because he hadn't told her about his idiocy. He couldn't, because he had no guarantee that Imogen or someone else wasn't nearby and reading Clary's fire messages over her shoulder.

He could write and ask her to drop by, though.

Coming to a decision, he reached for the grip on the bedside cabinet's drawer. It jammed after the first inch or so, and he rolled his eyes at it. Something must have caught inside. He wasn't sure what. The drawer held his stele, what remained of the paper Lydia had brought him, a pen, some sweets and an assortment of puzzle games his grandmother had left with him, apparently thinking the former were a necessity when visiting a hospital, and the latter something he would use to fend of boredom.

Nothing should have caused this jam, and the drawer had worked just fine when he'd put away his writing utensils before lunch.

He yanked, hard, and fell sideways as his movement carried him beyond the point where he could balance. Managing to catch himself with his elbow on the bed, though he also ended up shoving Lydia's book off the mattress at the same time, he glared at the mess that now littered the floor.

So apparently whatever mechanism kept the drawer from coming out all the way had broken and caused first the one problem, and now this? He didn't know a lot about drawers, but he knew that before now, something _had_ kept it from just flying out of the cabinet altogether if pulled too hard.

Where was Gale luck when one needed it?

As he pushed himself upright, he realized that actually, it was right here.

Would someone coming in to clean up the mess thoughtlessly pick up his phone along with everything else and toss it in the drawer, the way that first medic must have grabbed it from somewhere before she'd come in?

He could wait and find out.

Or he could take matters in his own hands. He wasn't sure that even a blocking charm would be enough to keep the flash from shining through under the blanket – and he'd need the flash if he was taking pictures while hiding that way. It wasn't the blanket itself he was afraid of – that would hold. But what about the edges? Would those seal off the light well enough?

There was possibly one place in the room where the camera couldn't see and he'd still have enough light to do without the flash. His phone was already there, and the book was at least in the general vicinity.

He made a face as he took in the scattered objects once more.

"Well done, Jace," he muttered to himself. "Now go and clean that up."

Lowering himself onto the floor was harder than he'd anticipated. The bed was too high for that exercise. As was to be expected, his knees buckled under him and there was nothing to do than to let himself drop onto his folding legs and hope he didn't hurt himself in the process.

Grabbing for the fallen drawer and setting it upright, he started tossing a few things back into it before he allowed himself a glance under the bed.

Yes. There was his phone, waiting for him. The pen had rolled down there, too, and so had his stele… And the book had been shoved that way in the course of his acrobatics. Fine.

"Stele…" he muttered as he started to drag himself towards his target.

His fingers closed around his phone, and he moved as fast he could from there, unsure of how much time he would have before someone came in. He pulled the extra pages out of the book and snapped pictures of them, without trying to read what they said and trusting in the phone to fix what settings it needed. He'd never seen a Gale phone produce a blurry image.

He was just pushing the button for the last one when he heard the door open.

"What in the Angel's name are you doing there?"

"Picking up the things I dropped," Jace returned. He slid the phone into the pocket of his track pants and stuck the pages into the book, hoping that they wouldn't be noticed even if he didn't hide them as neatly as they had been before. He didn't have the time.

Pen and stele in one hand, and pushing the book with his other, he started to maneuver himself backwards, until he could look up at the nurse. "I'm okay."

He put the book on the bed, and the other things in the drawer, then started to collect everything else.

"You could have just called someone," the nurse told him, sounding more than a little annoyed. "You shouldn't be trying to exercise on your own to begin with."

"Brother Matthew said it was okay," Jace claimed, noting that unless Lydia had said anything, he had just gotten proof that the camera was, in fact recording.

"Here, let me do that," the nurse said, his tone not the least bit improved.

If Jace had expected him to pick up some of the scattered objects, he was mistaken. Instead, the man reached for Jace, moving to lift him back onto the bed.

Every part of his body that was still under his control tensed at the unexpected contact. His hands went up almost on their own volition and he twisted, levering the larger man off his feet and sending him crashing down by his side.

He hadn't meant to do that. But he'd been down on the floor, and someone had grabbed for him from above, and Hodge had been a very good combat trainer. He had reacted without thinking, throwing the would-be attacker, and the only reason he wasn't now sitting on his chest and making sure he stayed down was that his legs hadn't as much as twitched when they would have been required to contribute to the follow-up.

The nurse surged up, naked anger on his face.

Jace made himself look as sheepish as he could. "Sorry about that," he said, calmly returning to picking up around him. "But I've warned you plenty of times to let me know before you touch me. I have reflexes, you know. Fifteen years of battle training does that."

He could only imagine the scowl he was getting for that. He didn't dare look up. He didn't think he could keep from grinning for much longer. It just felt so good to know he still had an edge.

"Well, see how you're getting back into bed without me, then," the reply came a moment later, and Jace kept his back turned on the retreating footsteps.

Yeah, right. That was going to be a bit of an adventure, but surely he'd manage somehow…

First, he finished what he had started, until everything that had spilled was contained in the loose drawer.

He lifted that up onto the bed. He wouldn't be able to reach his writing things or his stele if he left it behind on the floor, and the top of the cabinet was a bit too far for him to reach.

Now, how to get back up onto his bed?

He only needed a moment's consideration before he reached for the bedframe to test its stability. He knew how to hoist himself up onto a ledge or other object if his feet couldn't get any purchase. This couldn't be much different. Granted, he couldn't pull his knee up to slide it over the edge, but if he managed to hoist his torso up far enough to drop across the bed, he should be able to drag the rest of himself in as well.

It took a few attempts, one of which ended because he painfully collided with the edge of the drawer he had deposited on the mattress, but he did make it eventually. He wondered if the nurse would get into trouble for just leaving him. The camera had surely produced footage of that.

His back needed a break by the time he had settled again, and he spent the next minutes studying the ceiling and avoiding glances at the camera.

It wasn't a very long break. Soon, he reached for the book Lydia had brought him and started perusing the pages, realizing very quickly that reading while lying on his back was an uncomfortable affair. He rolled himself around to put the book on the bed and his phone on the book, once he had convinced himself that the camera's line of sight was blocked.

The number of messages Alec, Izzy and Clary had left for him was slightly disconcerting. As he read through them, he understood why. He sent them a summary of what had gone on, refrained from adding a useless caution about the unknown man who had tried to break into Clary's house, and pulled up his recent photographs to forward them to the Gales as desired. After that, he settled down to read them.

So they were experimenting with his angel blood? That wasn't surprising, now that he thought about it, just as it wasn't surprising they didn't want him to know.

New York's chief medic had protested the portal transfer. Another thing they obviously didn't want him to know.

At least as far as he could tell, their efforts to do _something_ about his back were genuine.

Another thing came to his mind as he continued to read: Lydia had stolen the file for him. He could only hope that she'd been careful about it. If the wrong people realized this, she might be in the same situation they were. They really should have given her a more specific warning beforehand.

It was too late for that now, but he figured he should make sure that she was filled in as far as possible before anything else happened.

He pulled up another text message window and tapped Alec's name.

*

Clary dropped the large rolled canvases and disassembled stretch frames she'd taken from the Fairchild building off in her room. Painting Christmas presents would be the order of the day after dinner from now on.

With a few large works from Jocelyn's supply to experiment with, they'd found out three main things: She could climb into a painting if she took it slow and reached for something in it to pull her in. If she went in with any kind of momentum behind it, she slid through right into the Wood.

She didn't need a forest in the painting to go through.

It was much easier to come back out of the Wood through a painting she'd previously climbed into. There was a feel to them that went beyond the mere colors of the paints used. It was in the brush strokes, the layers of paint on canvas, the artist's own essence poured into the work.

Once she knew what she was looking for, she'd been able to spot her own paintings where they were left in New York. She hadn't tried to go through there. Most of those were much too small to accommodate her, even without Charlie by her side, and she had no way of telling if there was anyone in the same room right then.

She went for her sketch pad and set to work, putting down the scene they'd seen that morning, the stranger by the door of her house.

When she was satisfied that she had captured his likeness as well as she could, she went to find Imogen.

With only the slightest moment of hesitation, she knocked on the door to the inquisitor's study.

Imogen called her in, but had apparently expected someone else. She looked surprised to see Clary.

"Back already?"

Clary nodded, and decided to come straight to the point. "There was a bit of an… incident by the Fairchild house. We agreed we needed to talk to you about this, and we didn't think we should put it off."

The old woman raised her eyebrows. "I hope this isn't connected to Isabelle or Alec."

"No." She lifted up her sketchpad and flipped it open. "We mixed endurance and acrobatics lessons and went over the roofs. Just as we arrived, there was someone trying to break into the house. I've no idea who he is." She placed the sketchpad on the desk with the drawing facing Imogen. "But this is what he looked like."

Imogen's face froze.

" _Where_ did you see this man?" she asked, sounding as if she was not trusting what she had just heard – or what she was seeing. "When?"

"Just before lunch," Clary said. "Exactly where I've drawn him, trying to get into the Fai—my house. Imogen, what is wrong?"

"Clary, you cannot have seen this man." Imogen was still staring.

"I'm not lying!" She protested.

The inquisitor looked up at her. She seemed shaken. "I'm not saying you are. But this person cannot possibly be in Alicante."

"So someone is wearing his glamor?" Alec had said she could tell what he had _said_. "That makes sense. We were listening in when he talked to the neighbors, and he claimed to have been a friend of my parents'. But he seemed too young for that."

Imogen shook her head. "Why anyone would pick a glamor that's sure to get that kind of attention, I have no idea…" she muttered.

"Who is he?" Clary asked. This wasn't something she just didn't know because she had grown up in New York. Izzy and Alec hadn't known him either.

There was a sigh from Imogen. "A criminal," she said. "Who did things so vile that I am sure even Valentine wouldn't have allowed him anywhere near his group. When we had him on trial, we couldn't even sentence him to a de-runing and banishment, for fear of what he might do even stripped of his Marks."

She paused, waiting to see if Clary's imagination was filling in enough details so she didn't need to continue.

Clary shuddered at the thought. She knew that Imogen herself was no stranger to violence. She used torture on prisoners. If she was getting so upset about whatever this man had done…

"What did you do with him?"

"We were torn between execution and life in the City of Bones," Imogen said, her eyes back on the drawing. "Execution was considered too light a sentence in the end."

Clary felt the corner of her mouth twitch. "And no one's ever escaped from the City of Bones? Is that why he can't be in Alicante?"

Imogen met her eyes. "No one's ever escaped from the City of Bones," she confirmed. "But this was twelve years ago. No one lives as a prisoner in the City of Bones for twelve years and retains enough of their senses to walk out of their cell even if you left the door open – let alone somehow making it back to Alicante, trying to break into a building and holding a sensible conversation with a neighbor."

Remembering the sounds she'd heard the prisoners make that time she'd visited Jace during his brief imprisonment there, Clary could believe it.

"His name?" Clary forced a cool calm into her voice. "If someone's wearing his face, they must have known him well enough to fix the image in their mind. We should look at his family, friends…"

"His family is gone." There was a finality in Imogen's statement that suggested that he had been the one who had sent them on their way. "And it would be useless anyway. If someone stole his face for a glamor, they must have seen him in the City of Bones."

She tapped the sketch with one finger. "I'd recognize this face anywhere. I've dreamed of him, describing to the court what he did and how. This is his face, doubtlessly – but it's what his face must look like now."

Clary frowned at the portrait. "You just said it was twelve years ago. Twelve years ago, he must have been…"

"Seventeen," Imogen supplied. "And he'd been at it for two years."

Clary gulped, trying to imagine what a rogue Nephilim could do if left at large for two years; thinking of Jonathan; trying very hard, and failing, not to imagine what a rogue Nephilim could do in that time.

"So we check the records of who visited him?"

"We?" Imogen sounded amused. "Yes, 'we' probably should, just in case. It'll be useless, though. No one other than the Silent Brothers has access to that level of the prison."

"Great," Clary said. "So you're saying a Silent Brother was trying to break into my house?"

That drew a laugh from Imogen. "That is entirely out of the question," she claimed. "A Silent Brother would never do such a thing."

"There's a first time for everything," Clary said. She didn't believe it for a moment, though. "I think we need to know who had access to him last."

Imogen's hand went to the edge of the page. "Can I have this? To show around when I start asking? And to verify that this is what he looks like today?"

"Sure," Clary said. "I can always draw another one if I need one." It couldn't hurt to remind Imogen that she was _not_ , in fact, depriving them of the ability to conduct their own investigations. She'd noticed that _Inquisitor Herondale_ had dodged her question about the name.

"I have no doubt that you can," Imogen replied evenly. "But, Clary?" She paused, making sure she had the younger woman's full attention. "If you see this face again – if any of you see this face again? Do _not_ try to catch him, talk to him or otherwise engage him. I fear that anyone using that glamor is making a statement."


	10. Chapter 10

Alec and Izzy looked at each other with some surprise when the doorbell rang. Clary couldn't possibly be back yet… could she?

With a perfectly synchronized, wordless shrug, they put away their blades and grabbed for towels to wipe their sweaty faces on the way to the door. They'd put in a full-out sparring session between the two of them, driving each other to their limits. They'd both been missing that. The gym in the back section of the ground floor in their parents' house wasn't nearly as large as the training areas in the New York Institute, of course, but it served its purpose.

Both pocketed their phones that they'd left on a bench by the door as they left.

It wasn't Clary.

"Lydia!" Alec greeted their unexpected guest, stepping aside to let her into the house.

Izzy started to move towards her, but stopped herself with a look at the older woman's arm. "Are you huggable?"

Lydia laughed and stepped into Izzy's spread arms, hugging her with her free hand. "I am, mostly," she said.

"Sorry for being all sweaty," Izzy told her as she stepped back after a moment. "We were just putting in a bit of exercise."

"Laudable," Lydia laughed, offering Alec the same way of greeting. "I wish that everyone was as diligent about keeping up their skill while home."

As they led the way into the living room, Lydia studied the paintings lined up along the walls of the hallway. "Are you redecorating?"

"Clary's clearing out her mother's townhouse," Alec said. "She offered that we could keep one or two of her mother's finished paintings, and we're trying to figure out which looks best in the house… That'll make a nice New Year's present for mom."

"Jocelyn made these?" Lydia went back to study one of them in more detail. "I heard she was an artist, but I don't think I've ever seen any of her work before. Is Clary going to sell any of them? I might be interested in putting one in my office."

Now that was a great idea. Lydia's office in Alicante had to be somewhere in the Gard. Having an entrance there could turn out to be most convenient.

"You'll have to ask her," Alec said. "She should be around again later – Izzy took over tutoring her in all the things her mother never let her learn, and they really should be at it right now, but Clary needed to talk to Inquisitor Herondale about something urgent."

They entered the living room, and he pointedly didn't look at the bookshelf in which he had concealed the stolen Starkweather file they were planning to return where it belonged tonight. Alec indicated the sofa with a generous gesture. "Please, make yourself comfortable. I'm sorry – we should have come and said hello before this. The only excuse I have is that things have been a bit… interesting around here."

"Alec," Lydia said, reaching out to pat his arm with her left hand. "It's okay. I understand. And I'm so sorry about what happened…"

"Yeah." Alec nodded. "Me, too."

"I've talked to Jace," Lydia continued. "Yesterday, and today."

Alec felt his expression grow guarded, but he figured it fitted the situation well enough, so he didn't even try to keep a neutral face. Let her make of it what she would. "How is he doing?" he asked cautiously.

"Quite well, actually, all things considered," Lydia told him. She was smiling now. "When I visited with him today, he was sitting up on the side of his bed and you wouldn't have known there was anything wrong with him. You'll see – he'll probably surprise us all with what he makes of the situation."

Alec didn't have the least doubt that he was going to surprise Lydia.

"That's good to know," he said. He knew his smile looked forced. It felt forced. He trusted Lydia. He wanted to trust Lydia. He wanted to let her share in what they knew, at least enough so she wouldn't worry about any of them. That, of course, was useless. If they took the risk and confided in her, she _would_ worry about them – more than she already did.

"He wants to see you, Alec," Lydia continued.

"Does he?"

"Yes! Whatever he said to you before, he knows you never meant to hurt him. Please, Alec? Will you go and talk to him?"

Alec sighed. "I tried. They said I wasn't allowed near him."

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. That had to be either Clary or Jace, and in both cases it was potentially important. No matter how much he trusted Lydia, he couldn't take out his inexplicably working phone in front of her.

"Surely they’ll let you through if he asks them to," Lydia said. "Will you try?"

"What makes you think they'll care about what Jace says? He's--" The phone vibrated again, more insistently than the first time. He wouldn't have been surprised if Lydia had caught the buzz it made. "Lydia, can you excuse me for a moment? I need to take care of something really important real quick."

Looking confused, she nodded, and Alec left with a quick "Be right back."

"What was that about?" he heard Lydia say, followed by his sister's laugh.

"He probably just realized he left something in the oven and it's burning up if he doesn't get it out quickly."

"Alec cooks?" Lydia sounded incredulous.

Izzy was clearly amused by her reaction. "He better cook, because I don't."

Alec took the cue and ducked into the kitchen.

The messages were from Jace. He scanned the first, alternatingly shaking his head and grinning at his summary of how he'd had to quickly hide and then managed to retrieve his phone, which explained the morning's absence of text messages. That would probably teach Jace to be more careful with his food… He wondered what his _parabatai_ had been thinking of when he had managed to make the kind of mess that required a change of bed sheets. Clary, probably.

That one must have come in while he'd been training with Izzy. The second one – the one that had just insisted that he read it – was much shorter.

_L. got my file for me. You need to tell her what's going on. I couldn't. Camera defly on._

Another message came in, a copy of the file attached. He'd read that later.

 _L. in the house now_ , Alec texted back. _Pie first, tell her then._

Jace barely left him time to get plates out before his reply arrived. _Hide a few good Healing charms in her piece_.

Alec almost laughed at the last. No matter how much he would have liked to go through with that suggestion, he didn't think he should be tinkering with the protection charms that were already in the pie.

He glanced into the fridge to check what was there. The one attached to his penny was fresh and looked like cherry. Where had they gotten fresh cherries in November? Izzy's penny held classical apple pie, and Jace's had the ever-present lemon-meringue attached. There was a single piece of blueberry left over and placed on a separate plate.

He'd planned to cut pieces with particularly strong helpings of _These people are under our protection and don't you dare even think of harming them, or else_. He trusted Lydia, in theory, but he needed more than mere _trust_ if he was going to share any of their knowledge with her. She worked for the Clave. She was too close to people who may have been involved in all of this to risk anything based merely on what he believed.

A moment's scrutiny told him that the Gales' assessment of their situation seemed to have changed slightly. The pies were so full of protection charms he wasn't sure anyone who meant them truly ill would get around a stay in the infirmary after eating any of it.

Not sure of Lydia's preferences, he put together a selection on a larger platter, swaying between amusement and annoyance at himself at the realization.

Just great: They'd been engaged to marry and he had no idea what flavors she even liked. Next time he asked anyone to marry him, he definitely needed to do better in the area of getting to know them before they went to the altar together.

He allowed himself a few seconds of daydreaming about standing before a Silent Brother again, Jace by his side as his best man, and Magnus striding down the aisle, not to interrupt a wedding, but to participate in it…

Now, that wasn't going to happen. At least not like that: Magnus as a warlock couldn't have wedding runes, and he wasn't going to allow a stele on his skin ever again if he could avoid it.

But something along those lines would be nice.

What would Magnus say about that? How would he react if asked? Surely he wouldn't laugh at him… right?

Pushing aside thoughts that were too complicated to heap on top of an already complicated situation, he balanced the mixed platter, three plates and forks into the living room.

"Thought I'd bring us something to eat since I was in the kitchen already," he said as he put everything down.

Lydia's eyes grew wide. "I never knew you were such an artist in the kitchen, Alec! Where did you get cherries in November?"

"Secret," Alec told her with a wink. "I hope you're not too full from lunch?" He took her reaction as a hint and handed her a slice of cherry pie, before taking another one for himself.

She laughed. "Actually, this might as well be lunch. I'm not so great at cooking myself right now, so I get a lot of practice making sandwiches."

"You need to drop by for meals more often then," Izzy declared as she started to attack a piece of lemon-meringue with her fork. She scowled for a moment as she savored the first bite. The charm volume left an interesting taste – not unpleasant by any definition of the word, but definitely unique.

Alec gave the slightest shrug. He claimed the last piece of blueberry pie before anyone else could take it.

"By the Angel, Alec, this is amazing!" Lydia almost seemed to inhale the pie. "Where did you learn to make these?"

Praying she wasn't going to ask him for the recipe, he made a vague motion with his hand. "We had a lot of time when Aldertree wouldn't let us in the field."

"Try the lemon one," Izzy recommended, speaking around a mouthful of pie. "It's incredible."

Lydia held out her plate, and Alec obliged and transferred a piece. He was taking alternate bites from the two he had secured for himself.

He let her eat the second slice. When she followed up by gaging a piece of apple pie, clearly trying to determine if she had enough space left in her stomach for it, he decided the charms had approved her sufficiently.

"Lydia," he said, cutting a piece of apple pie through the middle and giving her half of it with a grin, "There are a few things we should probably tell you. Knowing them might put you at risk, though, so if you'd rather not…"

The expression on Lydia's face was hard to read. There was surprise at his statement, but mixed in with it was something else.

"I stole Jace's medical file today," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "If there's anything going on, I probably already am."

Alec nodded. "That's what he said."

"He?"

"Jace." Alec decided to skip the long explanations that would require a lot of suspension of disbelief on Lydia's side, and pulled out the solid, hard evidence. "Jace isn't angry at me. He never was. He just needed to create an opportunity to talk without being overheard. Then things went from there, and we used what we had." He pulled up the message in which Jace had asked him to fill in Lydia and placed the phone on the table, facing her.

She stared.

"But phones don't work in Idris."

"Don't tell it that," Alec said. "Think of it as an artifact concealed as a phone if it helps. It doesn't even need to be in this dimension to work."

"Where did you get this? Who else has one?"

"Izzy and Clary. Magnus and Simon back in New York. And it's a long story." He raised a hand to forestall her next question. "Lydia, I don't miss a shot at that distance. The reason I hit Jace was that my bow had been tampered with. I don't think we were meant to come out of that mission alive. We were told we were to cover side tunnels, but we ended up right in the hive chamber. Alone, with no reinforcements at hand. With a misadjusted bow. It may not seem like it when you look at Jace, but we got lucky."

Lydia had stopped eating. "Who'd want to kill you?"

"Aldertree's involved somehow," Alec said. "That's all we know for sure so far. It wasn't the first time. The last mission before that—" He stopped when Lydia raised her hand. "What?"

"Don't give me any details," she cautioned. "Remember where I work. What I don't know, I can't give away by accident."

*

_November 19 th, 2016_

It was about two hours after midnight when Clary stepped out of a painting of a picturesque square of Alicante and into the ground floor corridor of the Lightwood house.

"You're getting good at this," Charlie said as she released her. She had held on to the younger woman's shoulder and let her guide both of them out of the Wood. "You're certainly ready to do a simple in and out without me to instruct you by now."

Clary beamed. "I'm not sure about 'good', but definitely 'better'," she said. "But we'd still like to have you along tonight. Just in case we need to get guards out of the way or anything. I can't _paint_ them asleep."

Charlie laughed. "Speaking of asleep – do we need to wake up Alec and Izzy first?"

"Alec and Izzy are awake," Alec's voice came from the living room. "Just didn't want to be in the way so there wouldn't be any crashes."

"I don't fall out of the pictures anymore," Clary claimed.

The Lightwood siblings came to join them. Alec carried a backpack and the file they were going to return. Izzy had two witchlights that she was tossing up and catching alternatingly, like a juggler.

"Right," Alec said. "The plan's the same as it was this afternoon. You drop Charlie off first, so she can secure the perimeter. Then you come back for Izzy and me."

Clary nodded her agreement. They had found that her transport capacity was sorely limited. Taking Izzy and Alec at the same time without the added adrenalin spike from having to escape quickly was going to be hard enough. Charlie had suggested that it might be easier once she was using her own paintings, but that had to wait until she had actually finished something.

Izzy handed one of the witchlight stones to Charlie. "To light your way," she said. "Unless you can play light? I don't think we should leave any more charms on the library than we can help."

The Bard pocketed the stone. "Right. Let's go."

The Wood didn't know day or night. The light there was always the same, sunlight filtering through the dense foliage of the trees, the sun itself never visible.

The library felt all the darker for it, though a Nightvision charm sketched on their eyelids took care of that. There was enough moonlight coming through the window to see by. The witchlight wouldn't come in until they left the room and entered places that had no access to even the faintest light source. Even a Nightvision charm needed _some_ light to see by.

"I bet our unknown _friend_ is somewhere in there," Izzy said, encompassing the shelves upon shelves of court records with a generous gesture as Alec returned the first file.

Alec straightened and looked around. "I bet you're right. But since these are sorted by alphabet, that won't help us unless we want to check every single file in here."

"Or unless we find a register," Charlie suggested.

Alec shook his head. "Probably in the computer. Even if we find one, we can't log in from here because we'd set off all kinds of alarm."

"I thought electricity doesn't work in Alicante?"

"Energy from angelic power cores works, like what we use to power the Institutes."  He reached for the handle of the door leading out into the corridor. "Okay, let's have a look around."

As he found out upon depressing the handle, the door was locked. He sketched an Open on the lock and tried again, but to no avail. The lock must have been secured with runes that went beyond the opening one they used routinely.

"Allow me?" Charlie asked while he was trying to remember any stronger opening runes.

He stepped aside to make space for her. Instead of moving towards the door, Charlie whistled two notes. They sounded dangerously loud in their ears, but he could hear the lock click as the second one dissipated.

"Can you teach us that?" Alec asked as he pushed the door open and listened.

"Only if you have some Bardic talent."

Alec made a vague noise at that. Jace was the musical one among the lot of them.

They seemed to be alone – or if anyone else was hiding in here, they were being extremely silent.

Raising his witchlight to light their way, he proceeded, moving down the corridor until he reached a branch. He stopped there and turned to his companions. "Does anyone insist that we split up?"

They all shook their heads at him. Splitting up would allow them to cover more ground, but ultimately, it increased their risk. They turned to the right, following that branch until it came to a dead end with another door.

This one wasn't even locked. Cracking it open revealed a staircase, the posts of the handrail decorated with ornate angel carvings that tickled Alec's memory. He'd probably seen work by the same artist somewhere around Alicante.

"Yeah, no," he whispered as he shut that door again. "Let's stay up here."

The doors all looked the same, and there was no way of telling which ones would contain more archives and which might be offices. They settled on a random one close to the stairs that Charlie whistled open for them.

They entered someone's workroom, with a desk and a screen they didn't dare touch. Izzy gave the shelves a cursory glance and, pointing at a set of books, made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

"Runes of the Silent Brothers, Runes of the Iron Sisters, Runes of the Clave," she read. "I thought these weren't supposed to be available to just anyone."

She pulled the middle book out and opened it, studying the first page.

Alec joined her, surprised to see that the runes were not hidden from his sight.

"Too many to copy them all," Izzy noted, but she had taken out her phone anyway. Instead of taking photographs of every page, she pulled up the camera and handed the device to her brother. "Try filming while I turn the pages. That should be faster."

Charlie and Clary went at the Clave book with the same method. It was much thinner than the other two, and they started on the third book before the Lightwood siblings had finished theirs.

Just as he returned the Iron Sister runes to the shelf a little later, Alec spotted the glow of power at the corner of his eye. He pivoted slowly, trying to find its source.

Wherever it was, it seemed to be visible only from a particular angle…

As soon as he started pulling out books from the general vicinity of where he had first spotted it, he realized why: The object that emanated the glow was a small leather-bound volume that had slipped behind the first row of books, carelessly shoved back when space had been getting scarce.

"Charlie," he said, holding it up.

She looked over, frowning. "If you're asking me if I see it's soaked with power, the answer is yes," she said. "If you're asking what it does, I don't know. The best I can tell is that it's for preservation…"

Opening the book to a random page, Alec found it to be hand-written, in a style that looked ancient. The handwriting looked neat enough, but the letters seemed to consist mostly of lines going up and down in different patterns, with a loop added in here and there. He'd seen that kind of old handwriting before, and would probably be able to decipher it given enough time, but it was beyond anything that would qualify as a quick read. This would be made worse by the old language, effectively putting the book into double code.

It seemed to be a sort of journal, though, and the numbers were easier than the letters.

Spotting a date entry, he snapped the book shut and slid it into his backpack.

"Stealing another book? Shame on you, Alec." Clary had just finished returning the Silent Brothers.

"If they'd be using it, it wouldn't have ended up back there," Alec said. "So I don't think anyone's going to miss it. Seems to be someone's personal records. I saw an entry dating to 1152."

He didn't have to continue. Anything that old stood a good chance of giving them some information that wasn't tainted by centuries of selective disclosure. With a little luck, they were one step closer to finding out what they hadn't been told about the nature of the Nephilim.

Clary yawned, and he glanced at the time. They'd been in the library for an hour and a half already.

"Right. Let's look at one more room, and then get back home," he decided.

They left, and Charlie inverted her whistle to engage the lock again.

Choosing randomly once more, they ended up in a room that contained books that did not seem to be connected in any manner at all. There was no common theme, they weren't looking even remotely the same age, and the shelves were, again, not labeled.

This time it was Clary who pulled out a book. "An analysis of pre-werewolf werewolf myths," she read out. "Can we steal this one and give it to Luke?"

"Whyever not?" Alec asked. "They aren't numbered, they aren't labeled. I don't even know how people check out books in here. If you push the row together, no one will see it's missing. I'd read it first, though."

"You're suddenly interested in werewolves?" Clary asked, handing him the book to stow away. The row, previously packed as full as the shelf would get, relaxed a little, but didn't even show a visible gap after a little jiggling of books.

The young man shrugged. "Not particularly, but we've been eating large amounts of Gale Luck for days, and things don't happen at random for that. If that book caught your eye, it's relevant."

Charlie gave him an approving pat on the arm. "Just so," she confirmed. "Now… I know I'm still on afternoon mode, but I suppose y'all will want to get _some_ sleep?"

*

Imogen tapped her way through various menus to the prisoner list. She had planned to do that as soon as Clary had left her office, but a fire message had arrived just then, and duties she couldn't put off had kept her busy through the rest of the day.

As a result, she made it her first priority the next morning.

Nicholas Nightshade had turned out to be just as deadly as his namesake. She wasn't a squeamish woman by any definition of the word, and she had heard many descriptions of crimes committed in court and never thought twice about them, but his statements had remained with her for a long time after the judgment had been passed.

It wasn't just that this was a Nephilim, as opposed to the usual downworlders they sentenced for crimes approaching his in vileness.

It was also his complete, utter lack of remorse, the calm, technical and almost scientifically precise manner in which he had described his deeds.

How long did the average prisoner in the high security cells in the City of Bones live before going irredeemably insane?

She shook her head and amended that thought.

How long did it take before they forgot to eat, to drink, and simply died unless kept alive by runes to prolong their punishment? After all, Nicholas Nightshade had unquestionably been insane long before he had been put in a cell on one of the lowest levels of that prison.

Entering his name in the search field, she sat back and watched the rotating icon.

When it stopped, she spent a few seconds staring blankly at the screen.

File not found?

How could it not be?

She tried again, checking her spelling, and came to the same result.

With a sudden feeling of cold dread, Inquisitor Imogen Herondale began to realize that there was something very, very wrong.

Switching the interface, she went into her own case files, scrolling back through the years until she hit 2004. It had been spring, almost summer. She found the entry, filed on May 24th, 2004.

She tapped the headline to expand the file, and found herself looking at a red popup:

Access denied.

"That is my own file," she told the screen, quite uselessly. "Of course I have access to it!"

Checking that she was actually properly logged in and not trying to access court files with someone else's account, she tried again.

Access denied.

A glance at the clock told her that she didn't have time to pay a visit to the City of Bones herself right now. She penned a fire message instead, addressed to the Silent Brothers in charge of the prison, and inquiring about Nightshade's status. It had come to her attention, she wrote, that someone may have recently had contact with him.

The answer was on her desk when she returned from her first meeting of the day.

"Irrelevant. The prisoner passed away four weeks ago."

For good measure, she tried her file again.

Access denied.

She tried the files above and below it, to ensure she wasn't letting a computer error freak her out.

Both of them opened easily.

Another message went out, this one to the office that administrated the file server, stating that she'd tried to pull a file on an old case – including the case number – and that she'd been getting error messages.

This time, the response arrived while she was dictating notes on one of her current cases. She made herself finish the recording before she picked up the missive.

It was short and to the point: "The file has been deleted from the system."

"On whose orders?" she wrote back.

The handwriting on the response suggested that someone was getting very tired of answering questions from her. She resolved to find out who it was and to make sure they were going to have a lot of very tedious work ahead of them in the near future.

The answer itself, however, made no sense.

"The Consul's office."

Why would the Consul's office order the destruction of a court file for a recently deceased prisoner? She could only assume that the answer was an attempt to forestall any more requests from her on the matter, rather than meant to be taken seriously.

It did absolutely nothing to put her at ease.

Someone was walking around Alicante, wearing the face of a man who had died four weeks ago and whose file, though imprinted forever in her memory, had been deleted from the Clave servers.

A man whose very existence had, in fact, been deleted from the Clave servers, as she found out within the next half hour.

The person wearing that face had tried to gain access to the house that belonged to the young woman who was currently her guest and who happened to be her grandson's… girlfriend? Fiancée?  She didn't even know, and she gritted her teeth as she gave herself a mental scolding for that. She had to do better.

It was just that she was so unused to having family again…

But, speaking of family, she realized that if anyone was trying to get at Clary, the fastest way to do that would be through none other than Jace.

Jace, who was helpless in his hospital room, and, barring any miracles his angel blood might still work, forever unable to properly defend himself. Jace, who couldn't get away if anyone came to his room to harm him. Jace, who was her only living relative, the one chance to keep her family alive after she had already reconciled herself to seeing the Herondale name die with her.

Whatever else she did, she had to protect Jace.

Her next message went to the hospital.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Jace had started his morning with running through every exercise he could think of without getting out of bed. He had actually managed to work up a bit of a sweat. That meant he would have preferred to shower or at least otherwise wash in the near future, but even knowing about the issues that would probably cause again, it felt good. He had to keep in shape as much as he could during the next few weeks.

Auntie Bea Gale had sent him their detailed assessment of the contents of his file the night before. The most important thing had come first: She was positive that they could fix his problem.

The "buts" had come after that.

Between the double trauma of the arrow and the portaling, and the multiple attempts at fixing his injury, there was a lot of failed and wrong healing to roll back before they could heal him properly. If he wasn't in a great hurry, Bea wrote, she suggested putting it off until the solstice, when they could tap into some extra power. Otherwise, they might need to call ritual to produce some energy to spare. She didn't say it outright, but he understood: Given the season and the temperatures in Calgary, hosting what basically amounted to an outdoor group sex event wasn't very high on anyone's list of preferred leisure time activities.

In addition to that, after the multiple stele applications to his back, stacked on top of the wound and all around it, it would be preferable if he could go through a few rounds of their stele-damage-reversal potion before they tried anything.

 _We could still do it, but it'd be a needless waste of energy_ , Auntie Bea had written.

In which "needless waste of energy" translated into "requiring an outdoor group sex event in Canada, in winter."

So he now actually had a timeline: He needed to be in a position to get to Calgary and back by the twenty-first of December. That should be doable. Surely they wouldn't be keeping him in the hospital for that long.

The next part could be a bit more of a problem: Bea's preferred course of action was setting up the healing and putting him in a healing trance afterwards. Ten days, she wrote, and he'd wake up and be fine. Except he would have been out for ten days. He didn't know if he'd be able to get away with being out of Alicante for that long. Of course, Charlie could take him back in time and drop him off where she'd collected him, but surely ten days asleep would leave a mark on him, no matter how much effort they put into feeding him while he was unconscious.

That would be hard to explain.

He could stay in Calgary until he'd recovered from _that_ and then have Charlie drop him off where she'd collected him. The issue with that was that the mere thought made him feel guilty. Charlie's time travels took a toll on her body every time she did them. She didn't seem to mind, but it felt wrong to put her through that just for his own convenience.

He'd asked about alternatives.

Skipping the healing trance, Bea had written, would mean that he'd take more than ten days to heal. It'd be a slow, gradual process.

Thinking about it, while clearly less convenient, it was possibly the better choice for several reasons. For one thing, it would be easier to explain. Going from paraplegic to happily up and walking in a matter of minutes would require some suspension of disbelief all around. A gradual development was much easier to pass off as an effect of his angel blood.

So, no matter how much he would have liked to get rid of the issue immediately, he scheduled his healing appointment for the night of the twenty-first of the next month and declined the trance.

Bea had promised to send Charlie by Alec and Izzy's place with some of the potion.

Alec had sent him a summary of their nightly raid on the library's restricted section. He clamped down on the jealousy he felt at not having been with them. Just a few weeks and he'd be back in the game...

His breakfast was delivered by another nurse who gave him a darkly disapproving look and a reminder that he was risking further injury if he kept up his improvised workout.

"Come on," he told her, trying to keep his voice light. "Isn't it awfully boring to watch Jace TV if all I ever do is lie in bed and stare at the ceiling?"

That didn't improve her attitude.

Halfway through, his morning was interrupted by a surprise visit.

He barely had the time to call the unexpected visitor in when his grandmother came striding into the room, followed closely by Clary. Surprise at the first very quickly was displaced by a happy smile at the second.

"Is anything wrong?" he asked them, trying to think of reasons for the strange hour of their visit. Imogen dropped by for a few minutes most nights, and Clary had made sure to spend an hour with him in the afternoon, but so far Lydia had been the only one who had come in this early in the day.

"Not at all," his grandmother told him in a voice that was just a little too determined. "I talked to the medics and the Brothers this morning, and they agree that they have done all they can. So you're going home with us."

"That's nice," Jace said. "How?"

"How?" Imogen sounded confused.

"Yes," Jace confirmed. "How? I am not going to jump up and walk out with you."

Clary sat on the edge of his bed, and he pushed himself upright to lean into her, smiling as he inhaled her scent. That would be the best thing about getting out of here: Their time together would be less limited if they were living in the same house.

Admittedly, he hadn't thought about moving in with Imogen. Whenever he had thought of getting out of the hospital, he had seen himself in his old room at the Lightwoods' place – that was stupid, of course. How would he even get into an upstairs bedroom right now?

"The hospital is lending you a wheelchair until we get you one of your own."

"Fine," Jace muttered. "It better be the kind I can get into and out of without help."

"You will have a personal assistant to help you where you need someone," Imogen told him. She sounded somewhat proud for thinking of it.

Jace's expression darkened. "Grandmother," he said, his tone ominous, "Trust me on this one: When I wake up and I need to do certain things that belong in the bathroom, I will _not_ have the time to call for someone and wait for them to appear."

He had hoped that she wanted to discuss that subject even less than he did, and he seemed to be in luck for once. Her mouth opened, but she said nothing as she processed his information. "I'll take care of that," she declared after a moment and, pivoting, left the room.

Jace and Clary exchanged a look.

"What's all this about?" Jace asked. "My bag's in the closet." He gave a nod in that direction.

Clary slid off the bed to go and get it. "I have no idea," she said. "Something freaked Imogen out this morning. She was normal at breakfast – or as normal as the Inquisitor ever is – and by the time Izzy and I were ready to leave, she's all 'I'll go and get Jace, he's not staying another night at the hospital. Do you want to come along?'." She shrugged. "Didn't you have more pants than this?"

"Yeah," Jace said. "Not supposed to wear the other ones. No idea where they went. Do you think someone sent her the bills for my treatment so far?"

She laughed at that. "Maybe she heard what you did to that nurse." She finished checking the cabinet for any items that were left behind and brought the bag over to the bed.

"He deserved it." Jace had maneuvered himself onto the edge of his bed and started to clear out the bedside cabinet.

"I didn't say he didn't."

*

The sound of the front door opening brought Izzy to her feet in a rush. Alec was upstairs, studying the journal they had stolen and trying to make sense of the ancient style and wordings it used. She'd taken Clary's unexpected absence as an opportunity to get some order into the material she was supposed to be teaching her friend.

There weren't a great many people who had keys to the building…

Walking out of the living room, she found her father in the hallway, studying one of the light fixtures.

"Dad?"

He jerked back, as if caught red-handed. His expression darkened immediately as he took her in. "Isabelle. Aren't you supposed to be out training the Fairchild girl?"

"Imogen needed Clary for something this morning," Izzy told him. "What's wrong? We _are_ dusting the place now and then, you know."

"Just thought that light had a stain," Robert claimed. "It was a trick of the light. What is this?" His gesture encompassed the paintings still leaning against the corridor walls.

"Jocelyn Fairchild's last works. Clary is thinking of giving them away and we wanted to get one for mom. We're trying to decide which one we like best."

"But none for me?" he asked. He sounded more annoyed than hurt.

"Didn't know you're interested in art," Izzy said. "We can get one for you, too."

He waved a hand dismissively as he walked past her into the living room, leaving Izzy suddenly, inexplicably glad that she, rather than Alec, had spread her things there.

Robert didn't even glance at the notes that littered the table. He walked right towards one of the bookcases that were tall enough that even Alec needed a stool to reach the upper-most boards. Robert fished the small step-ladder out of the gap between the shelf and the wall and unfolded it.

"Margaret wants to read one of these," he said, though Izzy hadn't even asked. She started stacking the sheets of paper and books she had out a little more orderly, making some space in case her father intended to actually sit down with them.

He didn't seem to. Instead, he walked right back out of the room, and towards the training room at the back on the building.

"Are you keeping your own skills up, too?" he asked.

Rather than shouting, Izzy went after him. "Didn't your spies all over Alicante tell you that?" she wanted to know.

Turning, he stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Izzy scoffed. "Dad, don't tell me you expect me to believe you don't have people watching out and reporting to you if they see me looking even the least bit shaky."

At least he looked a little abashed at that.

"Why don't you go back to your preparations?" he asked, not giving the previous subject any further attention. "I'll just get some of my things in here and be right back.

He didn't have to ask her twice. Right now, Izzy was in absolutely no mood to continue the conversation at hand. She needed to warn Alec anyway.

Instead of returning to the living room, she went upstairs to knock on her brother's door.

"Dad's here," she told him without preamble when he opened. "And his mood is absolutely charming."

Alec rolled his eyes. "I'll be down in a few," he promised. "I'm doing a thing."

"Right." The corners of Izzy's mouth twitched. Her best guess was that Alec had taken a break and either was on the phone with Magnus or texting with Jace, both of which at least required saying a proper goodbye.

There was a curse from the kitchen just as Izzy reached the bottom of the stairs again. She followed it, wondering what could possibly have prompted it, and understood the moment she walked in on her father spitting something into a napkin – even before she saw the plate with a freshly cut piece of apple pie standing on the counter next to him, the tip missing and a fork dropped carelessly next to it.

"Isabelle!" Robert said as he spotted her. "When are you going to learn to stay out of the kitchen? You're going to poison someone some day!"

She swallowed hard. "But I'm sure I followed Alec's instructions precisely…" She was stammering a little, sounding not at all sure of herself, but that didn't matter. Let Robert Lightwood believe that it was in reaction to his anger at her failed attempt at cooking.

He didn't need to know – he couldn't know – that whatever the agenda for his visit here actually was, he had triggered the protection charms in the pastry, and they had identified him as the enemy.

They'd known their father had been cheating on their mother. They'd known he was going to put his career above anything, including her or them. They hadn't for a moment considered that he might actually pose a danger to them. By the angel, he was their father!

He dumped the piece on his plate into the garbage, following up with the rest of the pie.

Great. They'd have to dig the penny out of that later.

"What's wrong?" Alec had come downstairs to stand right behind Izzy.

She turned to face him. "Dad tried the pie I made and found it wanting," she said, sounding subdued.

"Oh." Alec's face froze. "That is… unfortunate." It sounded lame, but it could pass as an older brother's feeble attempt at consoling his sister.

Robert ignored that. "Have you heard about an appointment to start your evaluation yet?" he asked his son instead.

Snapping into a more rigid posture, Alec shook his head. "I haven't. I'd've contacted someone myself, but I didn't know whom, and I was under the impression I'd be summoned."

"You will be," Robert told him curtly. "They're busy people, Alec. You're not their only charge."

Alec hadn't suggested that, and he bristled at the tone their father used. Izzy put a calming hand on his arm.

"We know," she said. "It's just that it would be nice to get it over with."

Robert made an inarticulate sound. "What are you doing all day, Alec?" The attempt at sounding interested in his son's activities was audible, but not particularly successful.

"Helping Izzy train Clary, working out, reading…" Alec said with a vague gesture. "Didn't think it would be smart to join a training group, all things considered."

"No," Robert agreed. "It certainly wouldn't have been."

They stepped aside as he came towards them, headed back into the corridor.

"I better get going," he declared. "I have a meeting to attend. Call me if you need anything."

"What's the chance of the pie malfunctioning?" Alec asked when the door had fallen shut behind Robert.

Izzy gave a shake of her head. "Not particularly large, I fear. Here, let me check something."

She turned and walked down the corridor, making a beeline for the fixture she had found Robert examining when he had thought he was alone in the house.

Finding herself too short, she went to get a chair and tried again.

Feeling around in the nooks and crevices of the ornate fixture, the tips of her fingers eventually hit something smooth. She picked it out of its hiding place with some difficulty and held it up for Alec's inspection.

He gave a wordless nod and gestured for her to put it back.

They found another bug on the high bookshelf, all the way towards the back.

"Did he just plant those?" Alec asked when they were sitting in his room a few minutes later.

"I don't think so," Izzy said. "I saw him check the shelf, and he didn't reach that far back. I think he was just looking if they were still there."

Her brother frowned. "Why'd he do that?"

Thinking that question through brought a cold smile to Izzy's face. "Probably because he can't get a signal. Someone put blocking charms all over the house. I bet they don't send right, and he was checking to see if we found and removed them. Just think of what we talked about with Clary and Lydia downstairs. If they were working, we'd be in way more trouble than we already are."

Alec nodded. "Charlie was there, too. You're right – we would have at least had to explain who she was and where she'd come from." He crumpled a piece of paper and threw it across the room. "Dammit, Dad, you're supposed to be on our side."

*

The difference between a chair into which he couldn't get on his own and a chair into which he could, Jace found out, was that the latter had removable armrests. Though told that the hospital bed was uniquely unsuitable for this, being so high that his feet didn't reach the ground and he had to move down to get into the chair while his legs were dragging on him, he managed to complete his first independent transfer – if not particularly elegantly, at least also without spilling himself on the floor.

The man Imogen had hired as his personal assistant, whom she had introduced as Phillip Silverrose, took over from there, pushing him towards the exit without giving him the chance to try getting anywhere under his own power.

He let it happen. He thought he actually preferred figuring out the details without too much of an audience.

Imogen's carriage and pair was waiting outside the building.

Jace turned his face into the cool, fresh air, and gave himself a moment to enjoy the wind. It had only been a few days, but he missed being outside. The last time he had spent as much as twenty-four hours inside a building had been during his imprisonment in the City of Bones.

Not sure how else he was going to get into the carriage, he allowed Phillip to lift him up onto the bench without objection. Having a woolen blanket draped over his legs, however, he protested.

"I don't need that. It's not that cold!"

"Yes, you do," Imogen said reasonably. "They expressly warned you against exposing yourself to these temperatures. You won't feel when you get cold."

"I feel it everywhere else," Jace pointed out.

It was a losing battle, and he knew it. He _had_ been told that blood circulation was less than ideal in paralyzed body parts, which would cause them to cool out faster than the rest of him.

This once, he told himself. This once he'd put up with it. There was no way he would take along a blanket when he went out with Clary and the Lightwoods. It'd only get in the way.

He was glad that Clary settled on the bench next to him, close enough to cuddle up against him. He needed her there. As soon as the carriage started to move, rattling over the cobblestone street, he once again had the feeling of floating strangely in the air, thrown around by the movement below him far more than could realistically be the case.

Holding hands with and leaning into one's girlfriend at least didn't generally suggest any degree of helplessness. That was no more than could be expected.

He was sure that he had seen Herondale manor before, but he hadn't been able to picture the building when he had tried.

As they approached it now, the first thing he noticed was the flight of stairs leading up to the front entrance. Unless the building had a more convenient back door, he was going to need that personal assistant every time he wanted to get into or out of the house – unless, of course, Alec could be convinced to give him a hand.

The manor was large and sprawling. It was also old, with raised thresholds under the doors. He thought he'd be able to figure out how to maneuver over those in time, but for the moment, even being tipped over them by Phillip made him feel like he was going to think very well about how often he had to move from one room into the next.

Imogen pointed out the piano to him, making sure he knew that he was welcome to use it whenever the mood struck. Then she insisted that he be shown to his room.

"It was your father's bedroom when he was young," she told him. "I haven't changed much in it. I thought it would be interesting for you."

It would have been more interesting for him if it hadn't been upstairs.

"Grandmother," Jace said, "I do appreciate the thought, but is there maybe a chance that I could have a ground floor room? Phillip is going to ruin his back as well if he has to keep carrying me up and down those stairs all the time."

Imogen shook her head. "All the bedrooms are upstairs," she said. "It will be alright. Phillip is a strong man."

That, Jace didn't doubt. In fact, from the look of him, there was no way to tell if Phillip Silverrose was meant to be his assistant or his bodyguard. He was definitely built for the latter position.

As he thought it, he realized that made the thought of _having_ a personal assistant even less desirable. Did his grandmother think he was in need of someone to keep him safe? Here, in Alicante? Safe from what?

 _Something freaked her out_ , he remembered Clary's words.

Alright. So the room Imogen had assigned to him would remain his father's old bedroom. He'd sleep in it, but that would be it. He'd come downstairs in the morning and not go back before it was time to turn in.

His father's bedroom… The thought felt strange. The only father he had ever known had been Valentine, though of course he hadn't known that until just a few months ago.

The room was neat and nicely furnished, the bed covered with a quilt that immediately made him long for his own. Surely the others had brought that along for him? He'd have to ask when he was alone with Clary.

Phillip deposited him on the bed, leaving Jace feeling stranded while the other man went to collect the wheelchair. Oh yes, he would definitely not spend any more time up here than he had to.

At least he could see from where he was sitting that the room had an en-suite bathroom.

"I sleep two rooms down the hallway," Clary told him.

He couldn't help a grin. "Do you think grandmother is going to impose a curfew on us after which we're not allowed to visit each other's rooms anymore?"

"I'll give you the first painting I finish to put up in here," Clary promised him. "So you'll have something to remind you of me even when I'm not here."

Effectively giving her a back door into his bedroom. The thought made him smile. "Better hurry and finish that painting quickly," he told her.

"Oh, I plan to!"

His personal assistant returned, leaving the empty wheelchair by the door and walking over to where Jace's bag had been deposited.

"Phillip," Jace sighed, "Why don't we establish a few rules here right away? One: the chair goes where I can reach it. Two: You do not touch my things – or me – unless I ask you to. I'm perfectly capable of putting away my own things." That was, assuming he had a way to get to them that didn't involve crawling on the floor.

"Inquisitor Herondale said—", the man started to protest.

"Inquisitor Herondale isn't here," Jace interrupted him. "And you're not hired as _her_ assistant either. I promise I'll let you know when I need your _assistance_ with anything." He did his best to combine all the self-assurance of Jace Wayland, Jace Lightwood and Jace Herondale in that statement. His friends called it cockiness, Imogen had called it bold defiance, and some would have called it arrogance. Jace didn't care about semantics, as long as it got the job done.

It seemed to do so, at least in so far as the chair was delivered over to the bed.

"Thank you, Phillip," Jace said. His tone was strained. "Now I'm sure you have better things to do than hover here and wait until I need to go back downstairs. So why don't you grab a book and find a place to sit and read that's not my bedroom?"

The man hesitated. "I must be at hand if you need any help."

"I'll call for you if I do."

"What if I do not hear you if I wait elsewhere?"

Jace sighed. "I'll call _loudly_. Or I'll send a fire message so as not to disturb my grandmother. Now if you don't mind? I'd like some time with Clary. Alone."

A knowing look settled on Phillip's face, quickly displaced by a different expression. What was he thinking? Was he trying to figure out for just how long Clary would be hanging around before she realized Jace was damaged goods now and she could do better than that?

Strangely, the thought didn't even make him angry. Maybe that was because he knew it wouldn't happen – not because he knew he was going to be back in full control of his body not too far in the future, but because the bond they had was far too strong to break from a minor inconvenience like that.

He directed a meaningful look at the door, and for once, Phillip took the hint and retreated.

"Phone," Jace mouthed, and Clary dove for the bag to pull the device out and hand it to him, though not before she had pulled up a text window and typed "Wards".

Glancing at it, Jace nodded. The phone went into his pocket, and he pulled the armrest from the chair to get off the bed. It was much easier, he found, when he could pivot around a foot placed on the floor rather than having to do most of the transfer hanging in the air.

Jace pointed, indicating that Clary should ward the room's two large windows. Then he crossed the room to the closed door. The wheels seemed to stick to the carpet.

"Either my technique's shit or this room needs different flooring," he decided.

Charms. Glamors. Move to a corner and repeat the procedure on the walls just in case.

Clary opened a door that led off the room. "What is this?"

Jace went to look, and frowned at what he saw. Once, in the past, his father's bedroom had apparently been connected to a small chamber where a servant could sleep to be at hand when the master needed him. That wouldn't have been out of the ordinary a few hundred years ago - not with the kind of position the Herondale family had held.

Since staff of that kind had fallen out of use, the room seemed to have been converted to a walk-in wardrobe at one point.

Even more recently – probably as recently as earlier that same day – , it had been converted again, with a narrow folding bed set up in it.

He groaned. "Let me guess. Grandmother expects my _assistant_ to sleep there? Just great." He looked at Clary. "Can I go back to the hospital? At least there I could dodge the camera and text you. How am I going to take the phone out ever if he may just walk in on me any moment?"

They warded the inside of the door anyway, and Jace added a locking charm over the door lock without calling power into it. At least that way, he'd be able to activate it at need and keep Phillip out of the room briefly.

While Clary disappeared into the bathroom to add wards there, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Jace called, not particularly pleased with the new disturbance. At least they could test the work of their glamors right away.

It wasn't Phillip or his grandmother, as he had assumed, though. Instead, the door opened to reveal the two Lightwoods.

The relief Jace felt at the sight made him feel light-headed. "Alec!"

His _parabatai_ crossed the distance between them with a few quick steps and stooped to pull him into a tight hug that Jace returned. He allowed himself a moment of clinging to his friend and brother, burying his face against the other man's shoulder.

*

After briefly explaining to one of the staff how they were going to have to talk because they were supposed to instruct their friend who had grown up away from Idris, they were given permission to use a small meeting room in the library.

The story of Valentine's daughter, hidden by her mother and recently discovered alive and without knowledge of the shadowworld, had made news in Alicante, and Izzy wouldn't have been surprised if the librarian had turned around and asked Clary for her autograph.

Jace got some attention as well: the surprisingly recovered Herondale heir, tragically injured in the field just recently…

Imogen hadn't been happy that Jace had decided to join them when they set out after lunch.

"I can't get used to hiding inside," Jace had told her reasonably. "Besides, Phillip will make certain that I don't over-exert myself."

They found out quickly enough that Phillip did have his uses. Alicante with its cobblestone streets, high curbs and uneven surfaces would have been far beyond Jace's limited skill at maneuvering. At least with his personal assistant there, no one could accuse him of taking away Alec's attention from helping with Clary's training. Izzy was sure Imogen had just been about to try that route when Jace had asked Phillip if he felt he was insufficiently qualified for a small trip through the city.

His presence did make things difficult, however, in that they couldn't speak openly. They'd tried to leave him in a different room in the library, but had been unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he couldn't just sit in a corner and read while they were working with Clary.

The meeting room had a computer interface, and while they left it to Jace to walk Clary through some basic grammar, she and her brother started looking for the man they had seen – or the original of the face they had seen, in any case.

Twelve years ago, Imogen had said.

So they'd tried to get into the court records from that time, and found that they didn't have access to most of them. That wasn't surprising, since they wouldn't be public, and neither of them had any kind of security clearance to speak of right now.

Their next path went to the newspaper archives. A case like that – and whatever "that" was, it was enough to rattle Imogen Herondale, so it had to have been spectacular in some way – should have made the news.

Browsing the headlines, they found nothing.

So they went back, opening each issue on the screen and scanning the pages for anything that looked like it might refer to crimes or an unusual court case.

"How many issues are there in a year?" Alec asked when they closed the fifth one. "Three hundred something?" He put a finger on the scrollbar and made the list of issues move up across the screen to get an idea of how many they were going to have to dig through.

"Yeah," Izzy said. "Three-twelve or so. Six a week. Wait. Scroll back there."

Alec gave her a surprised look, but he went back where he had come from.

"Stop." Putting a finger on the screen, Izzy counted. According to the computer list, May had been a very short month for the local newspaper. The directory listed a grand total of fifteen issues. "Was there a journalist strike that month or what?"

Her brother was frowning darkly at the screen. "The eleventh is missing… fourteenth to nineteenth, twenty-first to twenty-sixth."

They shared a long look.

"Do you think Imogen had these removed to stall us?" Clary asked, interrupting her declensions.

"I'm not sure Imogen could just have a few newspaper issues randomly removed from the database," Alec said. "I wonder if it's only the database…"

"I'll go and check the paper archive," Izzy said. She was already on her feet. "Be right back."

 _Don't run in the hallway_ , Izzy reminded herself when she closed the door behind her and set out towards the rooms that housed the newspaper archive. She was trying to avoid attention, and running in the library would do the precise opposite of that. Besides, she needed a few minutes to formulate a plan.

It was always a good idea to not veer too far from the truth, and so she started spinning her legend around what had actually happened. The fact that they had seen the man outside Clary's house was officially on record, so anything Imogen had told Clary after that was something she could use.

She walked up to the librarian who manned the archive section's desk and gave him a bright smile.

"Hi," she said. "I need a few old newspaper issues for some research. It's a court case I've heard about that I'm interested in."

Her smile wasn't returned. "Do you have any idea how many issues we have?" he asked. "You're not expecting me to know by heart which case was covered when, do you?" Judging by his tone, people actually did expect that of him from time to time.

Her expression didn't waver. "But I know the issues I need," she said. "May 2004. Eleven, fourteen to nineteen and twenty-one to twenty-six."

The reaction was as immediate as it was unexpected. He actually laughed out loud. It didn't sound mocking at least, and Izzy took that as encouragement. "Can I have them?"

Rising from his seat, the librarian started walking towards the archive rooms. "Should have guessed. The Nightshade case. The only court case that ever brings young Nephilim down here to pull old issues. Morbid fascination at its best, eh?" He half-turned to look at her. "You'll be disappointed once you've read them. Everyone is. You won't find any gory details in there."

"Anything will be fine," Izzy assured him. "See, my friend is living with Inquisitor Herondale, who presided over that case. She said it was the worst case she ever had."

Imogen had done no such thing, but Izzy decided that her reaction meant that she might just as well have.

"She wouldn't give us any details, but yeah – curious. We have no expectations." She followed him into the other room.

"You can't take the newspapers out of the library," the man cautioned.

"That's okay. My friend's upstairs. Jace Herondale is her boyfriend, and he was recently injured and can't manage the stairs, so she stayed with him." She hoped that if she kept throwing in random asides, the man wouldn't even consider she might be interested in the case for any other reasons than the one she had given.

He barely looked at the issues he was pulling. He also probably didn't have to. Izzy could see they were much more used than those around them.

"Wow," she said. "These get pulled often?"

That brought her a chuckle. "Let's say most young people who have a sense for the morbid show up sooner or later to have a look. Bring them back before you leave."

She nodded her promise at him and took the stack.

*

They found his name and his photograph in the first issue they opened: Nicholas Nightshade. He was responsible for the deaths of eight Nephilim and had been caught in the act of doing something the article did not define in any more detail to his latest victim.

The number of downworlders and mundanes among his victims was given as "unknown". His case had been processed and tried in the most expedited manner that could be managed. The defense counsel assigned to him had tried to make a plea for insanity, representing his client 'half-heartedly at best', until Nightshade had told him to shut up and spent two full court sessions treating the court to a full account of his deeds until they refused to let him speak on the matter any more. There were no details given, but they all started to wonder if they even wanted to know them.

Jace put the last article flat on the table and pointed as he translated for Clary. "Nightshade's transfer to a permanent cell in the City of Bones, where he will stay for the remainder of his natural life, was completed early yesterday morning."

They shared a long look. The man in the archive had been right. There was barely any information in those articles to speak of. Oh, some of them were long, spanning four or five pages, but all they contained were hints, summaries, reiterations of the same things. There was nothing anyone could sensibly use for any purpose they could think of. As Izzy had been warned, there were no gory details. Nothing that couldn't be printed in a daily newspaper.

"Why were these deleted from the database?" Alec asked, his voice so low that even those sitting at the same table with him had to strain to make out the words.

"Why are these still in the archive?" Jace returned, his voice equally low.

Izzy's eyes narrowed at the question. Had there been something in the digital database that wasn't in these print copies? Was there something in these articles that was of relevance and they merely hadn't recognized it?

They had taken notes, but were they going to be the right notes?

There was no way they could copy out all the articles verbatim right now. If there was a charm that could copy paper, they didn't know it. Even if they had known it, they couldn't have used it with Phillip in the room. They could return, but if there really was something in these texts, there was no way of telling how long these issues would even still be in the archive.

Checking out the same ones several times also surely would draw attention sooner or later.

Maybe they should simply steal them. Clary could stick them into their notebook, and they could walk out with no one the wiser – but Izzy didn't fancy having to explain to someone why the newspapers she had collected had never made it back, and Phillip would surely notice if they disappeared without a trace, even if they managed to do the actual hiding without him seeing it.

"Can't he at least take a brief bathroom break?" Alec muttered.

"Dammit – Bathroom." Jace's face visibly lost some of its color at that. His look at the clock on one wall of the room was bordering on frantic.

"Phillip!" he said, loud enough to draw the man's attention and already moving back from the table. "Work for you. Come on – I may need you to stand guard."

He made it almost to the door before his assistant caught up with him, as surprised by the sudden hurry as the others were.

"What was that about?" Clary asked when the door fell shut behind them.

Alec shrugged. "Never mind. It served its purpose."

Izzy was the first to have her phone out. "Take the door," she told her friend. "We don't need any surprise visitors in here."


	12. Chapter 12

_November 20 th, 2016_

Most of the time, Phillip was very much in the way of any plans they might have. There was no way of convincing him to take a break. Jace's repeated declarations – and Alec's confirmations – that his _parabatai_ could help him if he needed a hand ended with a reminder that Imogen would be very much displeased if she found out that Phillip had left his charge alone.

Sometimes, however, he did have his uses. Presently, they had come to the stables of Alicante for Clary to have her first experience in the saddle. She wasn't particularly enthusiastic about that, but Imogen had asked them twice already when they were going to start her riding lessons.

The first thing they found out when they approached the fenced-in rectangle they were going to use was that moist unpaved ground didn't agree with Jace's wheels very much. He bit back a curse, but gave up trying to get anywhere under his own power. Instead, he had Phillip deposit him just inside the gate, next to the set of benches placed there for a small audience.

Clary was studying the pony Izzy had led out of the stables with mixed feelings.

"Strictly speaking, she's Max's pony," Izzy said. "She's very docile, I promise. Max learned to ride on her. I learned to ride on her. She's old and slow, and Max will probably be very happy if you decide you want to keep her and he'll get a proper big horse."

"She's plenty big enough," Clary declared. "And she has teeth."

"Yes." Izzy said. "But she doesn't bite. And anyway, the teeth are on the front end. You're going to sit on the top end. That's not where the teeth are."

Alec shot Jace a look of barely concealed amusement. He had brought a taller horse, saddled and bridled, outside, and come to stand by Jace's side with it. "They weren't expecting us," he said. "They've already given ours some exercise, but they said Crusader hasn't been out yet today. Do you mind?"

Jace reached up to give the soft nose a pet. The mare lowered her head, butting her muzzle against Jace's chest, then inspecting the wheelchair. She was a beautiful animal, with a creamy golden hue to her fur and black mane and tail. She'd been a present from Valentine, when he'd posed as Michael Wayland – one of the last things Valentine had given him before he had staged Michael Wayland's death.

"Not at all," Jace said. "She deserves the best rider. I bet she'll be happy not to have to carry stable staff today."

"I also suggested since we're here already, we could take care of her stall…" Alec noted drily.

Jace raised his eyebrows at him, then twisted around to look at Phillip. "Does being my personal assistant include doing physical labor for me?" he asked.

The older man looked somewhat unsure as he shrugged. "If it's work you need done, I guess," he admitted.

"Apparently, my horse's stall needs to be cleaned," Jace passed on the information to him – needlessly since he had just listened to their conversation. "I'd do it myself, but that's kind of difficult right now. Sounds like that'd be covered then."

"Do you want to come inside with me?" Phillip asked.

Jace made a face. "Do you need that much supervision? I'd really rather watch Alec exercise my horse, but if you've never cleaned a horse stall before and need instructions…"

Probably just imagining how Jace would put him through the most thorough and unpleasant variation of the task, and entirely aware of the many little extra orders he would be able to think of, Phillip made a dismissive gesture. "I think I'll manage."

Alec looked after the retreating man for a moment before he checked the saddle girth, mounted and settled comfortably in the saddle. Crusader seemed a little surprised to be ridden by her master's friend instead of her master, but she went willingly enough, her steps light and energetic.

Max's pony Brownie, in contrast, stood rooted to the spot while Izzy explained the basics of horse anatomy and tack and the theory about how to mount.

It wasn't hard to see that Izzy's hand on the reins was there strictly to reassure Clary. Brownie wouldn't have moved even if left standing there all on her own.

While Alec was trotting Crusader along the fence, giving her time to warm up and loosen her muscles, Clary eventually put a foot in the stirrup and clambered up.

"You look good on her!" Jace called over as Izzy corrected her seat.

"Try not to cling," she advised. "You're quite safe up there and won't slide off unless you do some really odd gymnastics in the saddle. Just relax."

"Easy for you to say," Clary said.

Izzy gave her a grin. "Why don't you wave at Jace from up there?" she suggested.

Jace waved at Clary, and after a moment she actually did let go of the saddle with one hand to wave back at him.

For the next twenty minutes, Alec put Crusader through her paces, riding her in smaller and smaller bends and circles and proving to Jace that the staff did, indeed, not neglect the horses' training while no one of the family was in town or had the time to ride.

For the same twenty minutes, Izzy had Clary go through a number of simple exercises on Brownie's back, with the pony never moving as much as a step in any direction.

She was to let go of the saddle with both hands, hold out her arms sideways and turn her upper body first one way, then the other; she was to lean forward until she was nearly lying along the pony's neck, then raise herself up again and lean back as far as she could;

Clary actually had to laugh when Izzy told her to swing one leg across over Brownie's neck to sit sideways in the saddle, then continued to direct her in a full turn step by step.

"I'm sure this isn't how people ride," she said when she was facing to the front again.

"It's how people get comfortable with their balance," Izzy replied. "Now, how about we move a few steps?"

"Move?" Clary said.

"Yes. Move, as in: walk forward."

Clary was shooting doubtful glances at Alec, who was showing off Crusader's canter.

"No, not like that," Izzy promised. "Just at a walk. I'll lead her. All you have to do is sit and relax."

To Clary's visible surprise, that worked reasonably well, and Izzy snapped a lead string into one of the rings on Brownie's bridle and handed the reins to her friend as she explained what Clary had to do to get the pony moving on her own.

"I'm afraid I'll do something wrong and she'll run off and dump me," Clary admitted. She had one hand on the reins, the other clamped to the saddle horn once again. Her feet were now sticking out slightly to the sides after she had heard that applying pressure with her legs would make the horse walk forward.

Jace bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud at the sight.

"Clary, Brownie probably hasn't even once in her life lost a rider. She's the perfect beginner's pony. I bet even _I_ could get away with riding her."

Clary shot him a dark look. "Do you want to swap?"

He barely registered her words. He'd said the first thing that had come to mind, but the thought had already spun itself farther. Could he?

He certainly wasn't going to give Clary an excuse to cut her riding lesson short in order to find out. Instead, he turned his attention to his _parabatai_. His horse wasn't very far above pony-size and, while definitely more spirited than Brownie, had already gotten enough exercise to let off steam.

"Alec, can I have Crusader?"

If the request surprised Alec, he concealed it well. He simply completed his round at a brisk trot before bringing the mare to an accurate halt in front of Jace and dismounting. "Where do you want her?"

"Just turn her around so I'm on the proper side." This was going to get interesting enough without him trying to mount from the off side and confusing the horse more than he had to.

A moment later, Crusader was turned and backed into position, with the saddle right in front of him.

Now it was time to get creative, and find a way to get from where he was to where he wanted to be.

Ideally, he thought, he should have found a raised location to start out from. A smaller height difference surely would have helped.

It was too late for that now, at least if he wanted to avoid drawing his guard's attention. Phillip could return any moment after all. He'd have to make do with what he had.

Alec wasn't making any move to help him without being asked, which was just as well as far as he was concerned. It wasn't even the idea of being half lifted onto the horse that he disliked, but the thought that there wouldn't be anyone to hold Crusader if Alec was otherwise busy. That was, unless Izzy let go of Brownie, which surely wouldn't have ended too well.

He remembered just in time to make sure his brakes were engaged before he firmly grasped the saddle horn with one hand and the back of the saddle with the other, reaching over as far as he could and still get a good grip.

Pulling himself up by the saddle from a sitting position wasn't that different from pulling himself up from the floor by a piece of furniture, or so he told himself.

The horse shifted a fraction, and he clamped the fingers of his right hand even harder against the leather.

"Don't you dare move a single hoof out of line, Crusader," he hissed at the horse. "Or else."

"Or else what?" Clary asked.

A quick glance to the side told him that Izzy had stopped Brownie so they could watch his efforts.

Just great.

"Or else I'll slide off and land in the dirt by her feet," Jace admitted. "But you don't have to tell her that."

Alec snorted. "Trust me, Jace, she already knows."

Rolling his eyes just for his own sake – he was reasonably sure no one else was currently in any position to see it –, Jace considered his next move. He had pulled himself up far enough to count as half on and half off the saddle, his legs dangling uselessly in the air. He needed to get a hand free, and quickly.

Not any hand – his right one, because the other one wasn't going to do him any good at all unless he intended to sit on the horse facing backwards.

With a deep breath, and almost expecting that the next moment would see him in a graceless heap on the ground, Jace let go of the saddle horn and, hoping and praying that his upper body was resting far enough across the saddle to prevent him from slipping, his arm shot forward and his fingers dug into the saddle blanket. It felt far less coordinated than he would have liked, but he had managed to put his arm into a position across Crusader's back in which he could lean on it.

Still, he needed a moment to convince himself that it was a good idea to rely on that alone and release the hold of his right hand.

Grabbing the fabric of his pants, he managed to pull up his leg far enough to hook his hand under his knee quickly, before the uncooperative limb could slide back down.

"If you topple off the other side…" Clary began.

Jace had absolutely no intention of doing so, and he had finally managed to maneuver himself into a position in which he was reasonably certain he wasn't going to.

"If I topple off the other side, you're allowed to laugh at me," he told her, sounding a bit breathless, as he felt gravity claim his foot and drag it down the other side of the horse. He gave silent thanks to Crusader for not acting up because someone had just dragged his shoe across her fur, and pushed himself upright.

"There must be a faster and more elegant way of doing this, but it seems that I've made it," he declared, to no one in particular.

It certainly felt strange to sit on a horse like this, without feeling the saddle leather against his thighs. At least the shape of the saddle would keep him from sliding backwards too far.

A glance down Crusader's sides showed him that his left leg had become entangled in the stirrup straps, and he leaned down, his right hand firmly on the saddle horn now to help him balance against the movement, and fished for the strap.

For a second, he considered trying to somehow get his foot into the stirrup, but he was still teasing the strap away from his leg when he realized that that would be quite futile. Without any way to push down with his foot, he wasn't going to get very far before his feet would slip out – which would leave him with dangling stirrups and no way of telling when they hit hard enough to leave bruises. He certainly remembered _that_ from losing them now and then when he had first learned how to ride.

One after the other, he pulled the stirrups up by their straps and laid them cross-wise over Crusader's withers in front of the saddle. If this actually worked out, he'd simply take them off entirely before the next time he mounted a horse.

"Okay." He declared when he was done and had straightened up again. "Can you lead her a few steps?"

A relaxed seat on a horse's back, Jace reminded himself, was actually one of the most stable positions you could get into. Unless you started to tense up and overbalance one way or the other, falling off was harder than staying on.

Still, it felt strange and wobbly, being carried and feeling the horse's movement without actually feeling the horse move. It was as if his upper body was being rocked into several directions at one, and it took more than a few steps before he managed to settle into the rhythm.

He felt his shoulders move back as the muscles in his back tensed to stabilize him. Ha! If he wasn't giving a textbook example of a perfect riding posture now, he surely wasn't far away from it.

Fine, then. He was ready to take this to the next step.

"Hand me the reins, Alec."

It felt good to see that Alec didn't seem to harbor any doubts that he was going to be able to control the horse on his own. His friend didn't argue or hesitate.

Instead, he stepped back from Crusader's head once Jace had started to sort the reins, and, a moment later, had climbed onto the fence and settled there to watch.

That left Jace with the next problem to solve. He was now sitting on a horse, reins in hand, and would have very much liked to give her the signal to start moving again – which should have involved a careful application of his calves to her sides.

He clicked his tongue to encourage her to move, and felt a muscle twitch in his back, just above the line where he lost feeling and control, as muscle memory overruled any conscious decision of what to do.

It seemed to be enough. Crusader stepped forward, walking along the fence at a sedate but even pace.

Jace knew he was grinning now.

"Well, Clary?" he asked, turning a little to look at her, and finding that Crusader turned along with him, just as if he had actually touched her with his leg on that side. The shift of his weight seemed to be entirely sufficient to give her commands.

That was, of course, just as it should have been, but for the moment, it felt almost miraculous.

"Are you really going to let me outperform you?"

She shook her head at him. "I think you already have," she admitted. "How can you make it seem so easy?"

"Because it is!" He laughed, realizing that it was the truth. A well-trained, well-ridden horse could be controlled with nothing but shifts of weight, the smallest amounts of leaning one way or the other. He knew that. He'd practiced that. Still, he'd never quite accepted it as so literally true.

He passed Clary, whom Izzy was once again leading around the square, trying to get her into a more relaxed seat.

Another click of his tongue, another momentary tightening of his back, and Crusader switched gaits, trotting with the long, flat strides of a horse trained to move in a way that ate ground without tiring either horse or rider.

Sit deeply in the saddle, Jace silently repeated words often heard while he had first learned to ride as a child. Straight back, legs relaxed; look ahead, not down; don’t pull up your knees; don't try to counter the moves; imagine your heels are weights pulling down; you'll sit far more comfortably that way.

It was the only way he could sit now.

*

"I always am careful," Magnus said into his phone, his tone one of calm reassurance with a smile audible in it. He had to find a nice present to give to the Gale Aunties sometime soon. Giving Alec and the other young Nephilim phones that worked in Idris had earned them his eternal gratitude. He wasn't sure what he would have done, alone in his loft, with no way to know how Alec was doing.

Probably pining for him, drinking too much alcohol and thinking up schemes to get past the current downworlder bans…

They talked every day, in the time before Alec went to bed in Alicante, when it was still much earlier where Magnus was. It wasn't the same as actually being together, but it beat the alternative. Alec had fallen asleep on the phone more than once, leaving Magnus smiling fondly at the soft snores emanating from the speaker.

Hearing about Clary's new skill with the Wood had sent a new hope blossoming in his mind. At the moment, she still had some trouble with distances, the only paintings she could sense across continents her own. She'd been putting in night shifts working on her canvases, Alec had told him, using charms to reduce her need to sleep.

As soon as she had a painting ready to give away, Charlie would drop it off at Magnus' loft – and then nothing would keep them from seeing each other regularly, downworlder ban or not, and without risking use of Clary's shattering portals or imposing on the Gale Bard every time.

Right now, he had something else to take care of. He had made himself a portal as close to his destination as he could get and travelled by mundane means from there. Portals only worked to places he had been to before.

It had taken him a few days and required calling in some favors, but he had eventually gotten a lead on where the warlock Walter was hiding.

With a last repetition of "I love you" and "Sleep well" to Alec, Magnus shut his phone and slid it into a pocket.

The neighborhood he had reached was a shabby one. Whatever kind of warlock Walter was when he didn't help some Nephilim criminal kidnap people and torture others of his species, he couldn't be very successful at it.

He rented an apartment in a building just this side of derelict, and Magnus wouldn't have needed the instructions he had gotten to find it once he was in the direct vicinity. The spells all over the place spoke a clear enough language.

It didn't come as a great surprise that none of them were particularly strong. Charging a lure didn't take a great lot of skill, and the spell that had been left inside his own body had been elaborate, but short-lived. It could have easily come from some book, replicated accurately according to instructions without being charged with a great deal of power.

It had taken only a few weeks to dissipate, and the protective spells on the front door as well as the one leading to Walter's apartment looked to be about the same – requiring frequent reapplication to work.

Magnus got lucky at the front door, entering as one of the other tenants left the building.

So far, so good. Touching the door the wrong way might have triggered one of the spells there and alerted Walter that someone in possession of magic was approaching his lair.

He spent a little while studying the spell work on and around the apartment door before he set to work bypassing the spells to apply some of his own to spring the lock. Here in the corridor, he could afford to take his time, when standing in the street might have drawn undue attention.

Eventually, a click told him that the lock had disengaged, and he eased the door open and slid inside, letting it fall shut behind him again.

The apartment was as shabby as the building, what little furniture there was scraped and patched.

A single book shelf seemed better kept than anything else in the room, which served as a combination of living and bedroom with an integrated kitchen corner. The latter looked like it had never been used and served as storage space instead.

Studying the books, Magnus found that most of them were simple spell books, worth barely more than the paper they were printed on. A small instruction book on the use of artifacts was wedged between them, and one end of the top shelf held a volume that looked out of place in its ornamentation. A bright green bookmark was sticking from the top of it.

Magnus picked up the book and snapped it open on the marked page, finding himself face to face with the spell he had experienced first-hand.

After browsing the rest of the book briefly, he sat in an armchair with creaking springs and started to read in it as he waited for the tenant to return.

*

Walter shouldered the door open and entered carrying a bag of groceries. The glamor that concealed his warlock mark came off as soon as the lock had engaged again. He sighed with relief. Keeping it up must have been hard work for him.

It wasn't difficult for Magnus to see that the younger warlock didn't have a great lot of magic to call his own. He had to be a very accurate worker, to copy the spell the High Warlock of Brooklyn had read up on in the meantime well enough to make it work even for the short time that it had. The dog ears didn't seem to give him particularly acute hearing. In any case, he hadn't noticed yet that there was someone breathing in the room who didn't belong there.

Magnus dropped the glamor he had used to hide himself from sight when Walter started to empty out the bag. It contained only things that could be eaten as they were, no cooking or preparation involved. That explained the unused look of the kitchen.

Walter turned and froze, a bag of chips dropping from suddenly shaking fingers when he spotted his visitor. His eyes were bulging to the point that it looked painful.

He bolted for the door a moment later, but he wasn't fast enough. Magnus had already raised a hand to throw a spell at it, covering the lock and keeping it in place – firmly engaged.

Leaning back, he waited while Walter tried to jerk it open a few times, then pivoted and frantically glanced around the room – if for a weapon or a way out, he didn't know.

It confirmed his earlier impression of his limited magic. He hadn't even tried to shape a spell, either for attack or defense.

When Magnus saw the other warlock's eyes move towards the window, he sighed.

"Now let's not be stupid," he said. "Jumping through that won't kill you – it probably won't even hurt you a lot – but it will draw attention. You may even have to find yourself a new lair. How about we talk instead?"

"Talk?" It sounded like a squeal.

"Talk," Magnus confirmed. "Like reasonable people. And if you don't lie to me, I will let you live."

Walter stayed where he was, his back pressed against the wall next to the door. "How can you even be here? How can you even be alive?"

Magnus' lips twitched. "I'm uniquely hard to kill," he said. "And your friends' plans didn't work out. You'd think they would at least have had the decency to tell you that so you'd be warned."

"They're not my friends," Walter insisted.

A shrug preceded Magnus' answer. "Clients, then. Makes no difference to me."

The younger warlock clearly was still processing the new situation. "But your hands…"

Magnus held them up, palms open. "As good as new."

Now Walter's ears actually drooped. "I'm dead," he said, his voice low. "If you don't kill me now, they will as soon as they learn. They warned me so often not to mess up that spell."

"You didn't," Magnus said. "They merely underestimated everyone involved on my end. And in fact, they already know."

Walter let himself slide down the wall, sitting on the floor hugging his legs as he rested his forehead on his raised knees. The litany he was muttering to himself consisted of two words, repeated over and over: "I'm dead. I'm dead."

Magnus sighed. He'd come to question Walter, not help him out of the quandary he had gotten himself into. "You'll be dead less quickly if you tell me what you know about them," he said. "If I'm sufficiently convinced you didn't lie to me, I may even send you through a portal somewhere afterwards so they'll have a harder time finding you."

Walter lifted his head just enough to glance at Magnus. "Why would I believe you?"

"I don't know. You don't have to. But then I'll make you talk and then I'll leave you here."

"You can't do that!" Walter objected. "You have no idea what they'd do to me!"

One corner of Magnus' mouth twitched upwards. "Actually, I do. They were planning to do it to me, remember?"

Whatever fight was left in Walter went out of him. "What do you want to know?"

Magnus crossed his legs and leaned back comfortably in the armchair. "How did you end up in their service?"

"They caught me using magic to steal. It wasn't much, I swear! But they said it was a crime and I'd be punished for it severely if I didn't cooperate! They were shadowhunters! I had to do what they said!"

"Describe them."

Walter hadn't moved from where he was sitting. "The first was blond. Short hair, like it'd been shaved before. Tall, thin. Younger. Maybe thirty?" He sounded entirely unsure of it. "He had this really cruel look. Cold."

He shuddered at the memory. "He took me to the other. That one was darker, black hair, curly. He always acted as if he was nice, but he really wasn't. I think that one scared me even more."

Suppressing a sigh, Magnus called up a small holographic image of Victor Aldertree and let it rotate on his palm.

"You know him!" Walter blurted out as soon as he saw it.

Magnus gave a nod. "So they told you that you would be punished unless…?"

"Unless I helped them with a project. That's what the second one called it: a project. He said I was to obey the blond one in all things."

"When did you know what they were going to do to me?"

The sound that came from Walter's lips was almost like a whine. "They didn't ask that at once. First, they sent me to get some information from another warlock –but she said she didn't have it. I thought they'd kill me then!"

"Ariana," Magnus confirmed. "I've talked to her. And they didn't kill you."

"No." For the moment, Walter sounded as if he wished they had. "They said there was a warlock who had done some very bad things and needed to be restrained. I was to help them with that. They gave me a book and made me memorize some spells from it."

Magnus lifted the book with the green bookmark. "This book."

It was a statement, not a question, but Walter nodded anyway.

"I'll take the book when I leave."

Fear spiked in the other warlock's eyes once again. "But if they come to take it back?"

"All the more reason for you to not let them find you," Magnus pointed out. "Was there anything else you think I should know? Anything that didn't make sense to you but might to me?"

Walter shook his head. "No. They barely talked when I was there, except to give me orders." His face took on a strained expression as he clearly struggled to remember.  "Wait – there was that one time when I walked into the room and they were talking. I caught the last part of something the blond one was saying, but you're right – it made no sense."

Magnus wondered if what he was going to be told now would be entirely made up in the attempt of avoiding his anger. "What was it?"

"He said: 'this body untainted by demon blood'. He broke off at once when he saw me."

That didn't make much sense to Magnus either, but he would pass it on to Alec, just in case.

"There was nothing else. I swear!" Walter's voice rose in pitch on the last syllable.

Magnus sighed. "Alright. I'll give you a portal. But remember – I have your scent now, magically speaking. I can find you anywhere. So you may be able to hide from them, but if you just lied, don't think you can hide from _me_."


	13. Chapter 13

_November 21 st, 2016_

Jace had been looking at the time every few minutes for the last two hours. He'd tried to read, but he couldn't focus on his book. Too many thoughts were racing through his head, and they were all going in circles.

He'd been so happy when he'd nudged Crusader into a comfortable canter in the square's corner and she'd obeyed. If he could ride, he could come with the others if – when – they decided to explore outside of Alicante. He wouldn’t be left behind – not even just for the six weeks to come.

He'd laughed at Phillip's horrified face when the man had come out of the stables and seen him on the horse.

Later, he had argued with his grandmother, trying to convince her that what he had done hadn't been dangerous. That he'd felt perfectly safe in the saddle. That he'd never been at any risk of falling off. That his back was healed and didn't hurt.

That hadn't worked out so well. She'd insisted that Phillip take him to his room. More, even: that he lie down on the bed and stay down until she could get one of the medics to come over and look at him to make sure he hadn't done any damage to himself.

He'd hoped that matter would be settled when the medic had come and prodded at him and gone and confirmed that he was none the worse for the exercise.

But the next morning had come, and when he'd started to get ready to leave with the others, his grandmother had held him back.

"I think it's really better if you don't go, Jace," Imogen had said. "You're a distraction for Clary, and we've seen yesterday how hard it is for you to accept what you've lost. Clary's training will only keep reminding you of that, and sooner or later you will hurt yourself. Your friends can come in and visit after they're done for the day."

There had been no swaying her.

Alec had offered to help Jace down the front steps if Phillip refused to go against Imogen's direct orders, and it had taken every ounce of self-control Jace had in himself to decline.

He was afraid that if they did that, his grandmother would simply banish his _parabatai_ from her home.

So he'd dedicated the day to coming up with arguments that would hopefully sway Imogen, and eventually sought her out in her office to present them to her.

It made no difference.

According to her, his insistence on being with his friends when they were training was proof that he wasn't adjusting and that he was not at a point where he would handle his condition responsibly.

What would she have him do? Watch from a distance, let Phillip do everything that took the least effort for him and reconcile himself to a life lived dependent on a person he couldn't even rely on obeying his orders because it was his grandmother who paid him?

He was getting very serious in his wish that he had never come to Herondale Manor in the first place.

Every time he caught himself wondering if they had returned and forgotten all about him, he looked at the clock and realized that only minutes had passed as the day dragged on.

He declined coming downstairs for dinner, claiming he was tired and wanted to nap, when in fact he knew he wouldn't be able to sit at the same table with Imogen without yelling at her. That wouldn't be any help at all, he was sure.

After what felt like an eternity, there was a knock on his door that he was able to identify as Clary's. Feeling weak with relief, he called her in.

The Lightwoods followed her.

For a moment, with Clary in his arms and hers around him, the world was alright again.

Then he thought of the long wait tomorrow, when he'd once again be left behind, unable to even do as much as he could have from the hospital room. He felt his face darken.

"Now you're looking about as happy as Phillip did downstairs," Izzy said. "What's up with him anyway?"

That she wasn't even trying to pretend she didn't know why _he_ was in a bad mood helped.

The corner of Jace's mouth twitched. "I told him if he came in here before I called for him, I'd tell grandmother he dropped me – and that I'd make sure I'd have the bruises to prove it." Seeing Clary's expression at that, he added: "I know, I know. I wouldn't have done it, but I needed some time to myself."

"How long does she want to keep this up?" Alec wanted to know.

Jace shrugged. "Indefinitely, I fear." He met his _parabatai_ 's eyes. "Alec, I can't go on like this."

Alec let himself drop on the edge of the bed next to Jace. His arm went around the other man's back in a reassuring half-hug. "We'll think of something. I promise."

Jace let his head rest against Alec's shoulder for a moment. Then he said the first thing that came to his mind, wincing inwardly as he heard how plaintive his voice sounded.

"Can I come home?"

He tensed immediately, steeling himself for Alec's reaction. There were many things he could say: That that wasn't what he'd meant by thinking of something; that there was no way they could handle him without having Phillip there; that the Lightwood house was even worse to get around in than Herondale Manor was; that Imogen was right, and he would only be a continuous distraction – or a safety risk.

Alec's answer included none of those.

Instead, he tightened his grip on Jace briefly, pulling him closer. "Always."

Jace blinked at him. Shouldn't there at least be a "but"?

The smile he directed at Alec was wavering a little. "You're sure that'd work out?"

"We make it work," Alec said, a conviction in his voice that usually belonged to Jace. "You take the guest room until we think of a way to make the stairs passable for you. Maybe Magnus can help us install something like a permanent portal between the ground floor and the upstairs. I'm sure we can fashion some kind of ramp for the front door out of the junk in the attic. Any of us can give you a hand with the curbs when we're out. We won't need Phillip Silverrose for that."

"You've thought about this," Jace observed.

"Since the moment Clary wrote to say Imogen was pushing for your discharge."

There would be other things to consider. There always were. They would probably run into issues they had no idea of at this time. But Alec and Izzy were willing to work with what they had. Besides, anything would be better than being held prisoner in Herondale Manor.

"When can we leave? And how do we get Phillip out of the way? I'm sure he won't let us pass unchallenged. He has orders to keep me inside."

Clary, who had been leaning against Jace's other side, straightened up. "I can have the canvas I've been working on ready within the hour. It won't be a masterpiece, but I'm sure I can get us in through it then. I can dry it with charms, so we won't have to wait for the paint to stop sticking to anything that touches it."

"Do that," Alec said.

Clary looked back and forth between the Lightwood siblings. "Can one of you come and pack my things for me while I work? I'm not going to stay here when Jace leaves. If you don't have any space for me, I'll go to the Fairchild house."

"Don't be silly," Izzy told her. "Of course we have space for you. Let's go get that painting ready. I'll take care of the packing." She was heading for the door already.

"One more thing," Alec said as Clary got to her feet. There was a caution in his tone, and they looked at him expectantly.

"I expect both of you to take turns at kitchen duty. I'm tired of cooking every single meal for us."

*

It took a little more than an hour before they were ready to leave, and they were growing nervous towards the end. None of them knew when Imogen planned to return from wherever she had gone, and none of them fancied dealing with her if she walked in on them waiting on packed bags.

Sure, she might just throw all of them, including Clary and Jace, out and make it that much easier for them. That wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, but it was definitely on the unlikely end of possible developments.

They breathed a collective sigh of relief when Clary brought the result of her efforts over. It was a rendition of Lake Lyn, easily recognizable and reflecting the eerie quality of the location in spite of the limited time she had had to complete the work.

Jace backed up from the desk, where he had just penned out a note to Imogen, and turned to look at the painting.

"You're sure this isn't going to drop us in the water again, right?" he asked.

"Provided that there isn't inexplicably a perfect duplicate of the painting we use in the Lightwood house hidden at the bottom of Lake Lyn, no," Clary reassured him. "Have you decided on an order in which we do things? I might be able to get more than two people IN here, but I won't get them OUT on the other end, and I don't know that I can find you again if I leave you in and come back for you. I'm still not Charlie. "

"So we make sure we have phones so we can call Charlie in an emergency," Alec said. "So far, the best way seems to be this: Take Izzy with most of the luggage first, then come back to get Jace and me; then come here again with me and Izzy and go home yourself with the chair while the two of us leave through the front door as we should."

She had no objections to that. The wheelchair, being made of some kind of steel, would be hard enough to get into and through the Wood, so it was sensible to not try to transport people at the same time.

*

"Where do you want to be?" Alec asked Jace the moment they stepped out of the painting – an act that, as Jace noticed with some amusement, required Alec to duck his head to avoid hitting it on the upper edge of the canvas.

"Bedroom," Jace decided. "I can start unpacking."

At least he'd be able to start pre-sorting his things so he'd only need to put them away later – and think about any changes to the room that would be helpful.

As he noticed with surprise, Alec and Izzy had, indeed, given the matter of housing him some thought. How had they known that he wasn't going to stay with his grandmother for long?

Well, he guessed it really wasn't that hard a conclusion to come to if one knew both Inquisitor Herondale and him.

He knew the guest room, and he didn't think its rearrangement had been done by Robert or Maryse. The furniture had been moved, decluttering the center of the room and clearing space in which he could maneuver to get from the bed to the wardrobe or the bathroom door without crashing into the low table and chairs that had once been there. They were now sitting out of the way in a corner. The high-pile rug that had been in front of the bed for as long as Jace could remember had been removed.

The room was completely warded already.

They had spread his quilt on the bed.

This was better than his old bedroom upstairs, he realized. The larger room would be easier to move around in, and having his own bathroom attached was an immense bonus.

"Should have come here right away," he said as he let himself drop backwards across the bed, feeling entirely relaxed for the first time since his arrival in Alicante.

"At least you're here now," Alec said, a happy smile on his face. "We'll hurry back and then we can make plans for real."

*

Later, all four of them were sitting together in the living room. Izzy had curled up on one sofa, while Jace and Clary shared the other, comfortably cuddled together.

It was enough to make Alec yearn for the day when Clary could just go and collect Magnus from New York so they could share more than their brief phone calls.

Right now, he was sprawled in the only armchair, a notepad in his hand as they tried to get some order into their plans.

"If you take Clary out for endurance training and an obstacle course in the morning, I'll stay in and work on transcribing that book," Jace offered. "And I'll have lunch ready when you get back. Then we can go riding in the afternoon."

"And theory lessons after that," Clary added. "Sounds good to me. Izzy? You're still in charge of the training schedule."

Izzy didn't seem to mind Jace's plan. "Check if there's anything you need for whatever you plan to cook," she told him. "If we'll be out anyway, we can as well get it on the way and you won't have to interrupt the transcription."

"Or venture out on my own and risk being kidnapped back by my grandmother's minions," Jace said. It surely had been supposed to come out as a joke, but no one was laughing.

Alec looked at Clary. "Day after tomorrow's your turn in the kitchen then. If you make your plans tonight, we can cover that at the same time."

Gaining a few seconds to think hadn't helped as much as he had hoped it would. He turned back to his _parabatai_. "I don't think she'd actually go that far. But we may not want to run the risk. We know Imogen can take things quite personally at times. Do you mind taking one of us along when you go out for the moment?"

Jace gave a short laugh. "Alec, I need one of you with me anyway. I can't get that thing up on a curb or over the threshold of any front door around here without help." He nodded towards where the wheelchair was parked. "So don't worry. I won't risk anything that way."

Alec looked somewhat relieved at that, but Jace had more to add.

"There's another risk I'd like to take, though, if everyone's okay with it."

The announcement made Alec go tense. He hated the thought of any of them taking avoidable risks right now, especially considering the many unavoidable ones they were facing. "Let's hear it."

"I want to text Maryse."

Alec blinked. "From here?"

Jace nodded.

"Why?"

"I want some real clothes to wear," Jace said, gesturing down himself. "I have no idea where the things I brought went, and I don't fancy buying a completely new wardrobe right now. I'd like to ask her to send me some of what's still in the Institute."

That made sense. The texting didn't, though. "Why not just send her a fire message? It's not the kind of request that'd cause trouble."

Jace caught his eyes. "Because I want her to also send any of my weapons she can get to. We'll want to check if your bow was the only thing that was messed with. Clary doesn't have any weapons that are really her own, and Izzy has her whip on her body pretty much all the time, so my blades are the only other thing that anyone could have gotten access to. The longer they stay there, the greater the risk they'll just disappear or something. And I can't ask her for that without possibly alerting someone if I send the message in a way that other people might see."

As Jace paused, Alec processed that. It had crossed his mind before, and he'd shoved the thought aside precisely because they had no reasonable way to get access to the things left behind in New York. They hadn’t even set up any kind of scrying appointment for his bow with Magnus yet.

"She also couldn't send those things through by portal. Besides which, with my grandmother's obsession with keeping me safe, if she got wind of it she'd probably either cancel the delivery or catch it and make it disappear to make sure I don't try to wear anything that might injure me. I'd like to ask her to deposit everything somewhere for Charlie to collect and get to us."

"She'll suspect foul play," Alec said. "If she'll do it at all, she'll be even more worried than she already is."

At the same time, Clary asked: "Is she right about the clothes?"

"Kind of," Jace admitted. "But I don't see why I can't just put on an iratze charm when I get ready for bed. That should prevent any issues." He turned back to Alec. "Don't you think we need to fill her in sometime soon anyway? After Robert failed the pie test…"

Unfortunately, that was a good point. They couldn't tell her about the bugs on any semi-public channel. They also couldn't tell her that their father – who was still Maryse's husband, since neither of them was willing to press for the divorce – was a danger to them, as determined by magical pastry.

At the same time, they had to consider him a danger to Max as well if it served his purpose – whatever that might be.

"Don't you think she'll think a text coming from _Idris_ of all places would be fishy?"

"We're not strictly speaking bound to Alicante, or Idris," Jace said. "We might have taken a daytrip to Switzerland or Germany or France and written from there."

Coming to that conclusion would probably require some effort at self-deception on Maryse's part.

"If she texts back and demands information, we can admit to having acquired artifacts that serve as phones. She can confirm that one with Lydia," he offered.

"Do it," Izzy said. "We really need to establish a safe communication channel with her – if for no other reason than to make sure she knows not to leave Max alone with Dad, ever. It's as good a way as any to start."

"I don’t like it." Alec had completely abandoned his formerly relaxed posture now. "But I agree. We need to establish a line of communication. I'll do the texting. It'll be easier to believe that Izzy or I left Idris briefly."

*

Clary had walked Jace back to his room after they'd broken up their gathering for the night. Her bags were still there, where Izzy had dropped all luggage off upon arrival.

"You're going to sleep in my old room, I assume?" Jace asked her when she reached for the strap of her duffle.

The look Clary gave him held equal shares of surprise and displeasure. "I thought I'd sleep here."

"Here?" Jace regretted the shocked tone as soon as he heard it. "I'm not sure—I mean—It's not—There's only the one bed."

Clary frowned. "We've shared narrower beds before. Is there a problem?"

She was right, of course. They also hadn't slept in separate beds since Valentine had been defeated unless they couldn't help it. It was only logical for her to assume they would continue that arrangement.

As much as Jace wanted to do that, he dreaded the potential consequences.

"Jace?" Clary prompted.

"No. Yes. I mean—" Jace felt his face flush. Why couldn't he have gotten around this conversation?

He brushed his hands through his hair and looked up at her. "It's complicated."

"Okay." Clary dragged the two syllables out and sat on one of the chairs – not the bed, he noted. She wasn't taking possession of the room while he objected. "Explain it slowly, then."

He felt a pang of regret. After all that had happened between them, he really shouldn't be putting her through this just for the sake of his own damned pride.

"Clary…" He didn't meet her eyes. He couldn't. "My back – it's not just my legs that don't work. It's everything below the level of the injury." He willed her to understand what he was getting at.

"Oh," she made, but his relief at not having to go into more detail was short-lived as she continued. "That's alright. We don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with trying. We can just sleep. Or we can see what works and what doesn't, and take it from there."

He covered his face with his hands for a moment. He should have known better…

"Not that," he said. "I mean, that, too, but—"

Maybe he could just ask her to look it up on Google. But no – that really was too silly. He took a deep breath.

"When we were in the library the other day? When I was in such a hurry suddenly when I realized how much time had passed? That wasn't to get Phillip out of there." He watched her reaction. "I mean, it served that purpose, and that was very handy, but I _really_ couldn't have waited much longer. I was lucky I didn't end up embarrassing all of us. Depending on how much I drink, I have a time window of four to six hours."

She was frowning, trying to make sense of what he said.

"The point is, if I sleep too long beyond those six hours, Charlie's spill-removal charm sees a lot of use. I set an alarm, but there have been accidents."

He could see in her expression as the pieces fell into place.

"Jace," she said slowly. "Look – if you insist, I'll sleep upstairs. But really? Don't you think at least one of us is going to wake up when the alarm goes off? And if we both sleep through it, there are charms and there's a shower and a tub in the bathroom."

*

_November 22 nd, 2016_

Jace woke with a momentary feeling of disorientation from a dream that had him back in the New York Institute when Clary started to stir next to him.

He had crawled back into bed with her after his alarm-clock-mandated foray, deeming it much too early to stay up. Besides, his clothes were strewn all across the room along with Clary's after the last night's experimentation had quickly turned from cautiously probing to very enthusiastic.

Finding a way to sensibly pick up objects from the floor would have to go on the list of things for him to do in the very near future.

"What time is it?" Clary muttered, her head buried against Jace's shoulder.

He stroked his hand through her hair, twirling a copper strand around his fingers as she cuddled closer. "Seven thirty, give or take."

That brought her awake in an instant, and she sat up so quickly he barely managed to free his hand without painfully pulling the strand of hair he had been playing with.

"I can't believe we slept this long! We'd surely be done with breakfast at Imogen's place by now!"

Jace couldn't help a chuckle. "Between that and your extra painting hours, you probably needed the sleep."

She didn’t argue that, but she disentangled herself from the quilt and slid out of the bed. "Do you think Izzy and Alec are awake yet?"

He gave that a moment's consideration. "Possibly," he concluded eventually. "Or possibly not. I'd check the kitchen first."

"Will do - after getting dressed," Clary agreed. She started to pick up pieces of clothing from where they had been flung before disappearing into the bathroom.

"Can you toss me some clothes, too?" Jace asked her when she emerged again, her hair moist and her expression marginally less sleepy than it had been.

She obliged, adding fresh underwear from the wardrobe to the heap she deposited on the bed, easily within Jace's reach.

She leaned in for a brief kiss. "I'll go and check on breakfast," she announced when they moved apart again, turning and following up on her words by walking out of the room.

"Uh, Clary? I--" Realizing the issue a moment too late, Jace found himself talking at a closed door. "‑‑actually need some help with that," he finished.

Just great. Now he had three possible courses of action: He could stay where he was and wait for someone to wonder why he wasn't joining the others at breakfast; he could shout after Clary loudly enough to be heard through the closed door and get her to come back; or he could make this the morning on which he learned to dress himself without help again. All parts of himself.

It wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that out of those three, only one was actually acceptable.

First, though, he'd go and apply some water to his person while trying not to pine for the bathtub.

Clary had left the shower curtain drawn back to give the shower a chance to dry out. Jace found himself deeply grateful for that, as it revealed an addition he had neither expected nor thought to check for before: Someone had improvised a seat in the shower that looked like he might actually be able to get onto it with some effort.

Just how exactly had Alec and Izzy thought of such things? He hadn't even thought of that!

Home, he decided as he let hot water run over his body without anyone nearby whose disapproving scowl told him to hurry and get done with it already, definitely was where you could take a shower without asking someone for help.

Next time, he'd remember to put a towel within reach first, and it'd be perfect.

*

"I made coffee," Clary announced when Jace came to join her in the kitchen.

"Great," he told her. "I made a scratch in the door frame." He twisted around to frown at the mark he had left. "Why aren't these doors any wider?"

"Remember that charm the Gales use to make their cars pull in their bellies for parking?" Alec's voice came from behind. "Maybe we should put one of those on your wheels."

Jace laughed as he protested "No way! Cars are self-enclosed structures of metal, so whatever you put on the outside doesn't affect who's on the inside. This—" he slapped his palms against the wheels, "is not a self-enclosed structure of metal."

"Maybe there are charms that can make the frame expand at need. We'll ask Charlie next time we talk to her," Alec decided. "Now, did someone say coffee?"

Clary handed out cups and leaned against the kitchen counter, cradling one of her own.

"Thanks for rigging the shower, by the way," Jace said with a look up at Alec. "How'd you come up with that?"

"We're geniuses." Izzy had come downstairs and arrived just in time to hear the last. "Also, the benefits of being able to go online and read up on things without having to fear spies or Imogen. Google comes up with a lot of interesting stuff. So does YouTube."

"Huh." He was going to remember that. Who knew what other interesting things it could come up with? "Isn't it a bit overkill for just six weeks?"

Alec shook his head. "Officially, none of us can _know_ about that. So it's better we act as if we expect to need permanent solutions."

That was a good point.

"Speaking of solutions," Jace changed the subject, "Can you bring me some notebooks for the transcription when you're out? I'm not sure we should raid Robert's study for paper…"

"We should most definitely not raid Robert's study for paper," Alec said, his voice cold. "Nothing that may tip him off that we're doing anything he may want to supervise. Besides, we don't know what kinds of wards he may have on his own rooms. We'll get you some when we're…"

Clary raised a hand to interrupt him. "We can use up what's in my mother's old study in the Fairchild house first," she suggested. "Then no one can remember us buying notebooks and wondering what we need so many for."

"We can always claim you need them for your studies," Alec pointed out. "But you're right. Let's use what we have first."


	14. Chapter 14

Maryse stared at the message as if there was any chance that it would say something different if only she intimidated it enough.

It didn't change.

_Jace needs some of his things. Can you pack him some clothes, his boots and any blades that belong to him? You can leave it all in the alley behind the Hunter's Moon around noon one of these days and it'll be picked up. TY!_

It was signed "Alec".

It had come from Alec's number – the number that went with the phone he had bought after they'd returned from their two-week absence, when Aldertree hadn't immediately replaced their Institute phones. All four of them had bought matching phones, rather than pressing the issue.

She had no idea where Jace's phone was now. It hadn't been with his things that she'd collected in the infirmary to pass on to Imogen Herondale. The other three had probably taken their phones along when they'd left.

That was the problem, though. Alec was in Idris, where electrically powered devices didn’t work, and where the phone network was non-existent. Inquisitor Herondale may have had an angelic-power-run laptop with a standing line to any institute she pleased, but Maryse was quite certain that it wasn't that easy to convert a device to use a different power source, _or_ to hack into the outbound communication network of Alicante.

Knowing that, and with the repeated warnings her children had given her ringing in her ears once again, she almost ignored the message.

The more she thought about it, however, the more the wish to get to the bottom of whatever was going on became predominant. It was true – Max needed her, now more than ever, and taking action of any kind could put him at risk.

But the other three were her children, too, and Clary was surely going to be her daughter in law not too long from now – at least in all respects that mattered – and they already were in danger.

Actually, come to think of it, Max probably already was in danger, too.

That last decided her. She'd defend her children to the last, but it would be easier if she knew what she was defending them from.

Grabbing a duffle bag that belonged to Max, she went to Jace's room and started filling it with clothes. The combat boots and leather jacket Jace had worn on that ill-fated day had stayed behind as well. Imogen hadn't wanted the jacket, blood- and ichor-stained as it was, with a large hole in the back. The boots, she'd been told, Jace wouldn't need anymore.

"With an injury like his, he's not going to be able to wear them without any risk to his feet," they had said.

She herself had cleaned up the boots and left them at the bottom of Jace's wardrobe. She'd painstakingly washed the stains out of the jacket, too, and patched it up with all the skill she could muster. It was on the same hanger she had left it.

Maryse moved her hands over every single item, feeling into the pockets and along the seams. She wasn't sure what the message had been targeted at, but she wasn't going to take any additional risks. If anyone asked, she was sorting out things Jace wasn't going to need anymore to give them away. If anyone asked about her examinations, she was checking that no personal items had been left in any of the garments.

She took his daggers. She'd slip those into the bag later. If anyone asked, she was going to keep them and pass them on to Inquisitor Herondale. They were Jace's property, not the Institute's, and surely there was someone the Herondales were associated with who could find a use for them.

Back in her own room, she penned out a fire message to Magnus. _Someone_ needed to know where she was going and what she was doing, and Magnus was one of only two options she had. The other one was Luke, and she had never had another opportunity to try and make things up to him. It wouldn't do to come to him with something like this virtually out of nowhere.

Magnus was as good as her son in law, which felt incredibly odd, given their age difference. She also was willing to bet anything that Magnus was already in on whatever it was that was happening.

She was about to send it off when something else occurred to her.

On a new sheet of paper, she wrote a briefer missive, asking only if Max could stay with him for a few hours while she was out on an errand.

It was time for Max to get out of the Institute for a while anyway. Her youngest son wasn’t going to come voluntarily, of course – he hardly ever left his room except on direct orders. The continued effects from his injury still weighed heavily on him.

Magnus' response was almost immediate:

_Certainly. Tell him I have pie._

That brought a smile to her face. She didn't know when Magnus had taken up cooking, rather than just mixing cocktails, but the pies her children had brought home from his place every day had been delicious. She actually quite missed them.

She should have told Magnus that, she thought as she went to get Max, the duffle bag glamored into invisibility over her shoulder. They should have met for tea now and then. Or coffee. Or drinks.

No, better to leave the drinks for after this thing was cleared up. In any case, however, just because Alec was spending time in Idris, that didn't mean she shouldn't be making an effort to get to know her son's partner better. And if he knew more than she did and chose to share some of that knowledge, that would be just as well.

*

Max had only put up a token resistance when she had told him to come with her. He'd objected a lot harder when he had realized she was taking him out of the Institute. She knew he hated it when people watched him and took notice of the limp with which he walked, dragging one leg even though he made every effort not to, or the awkward way in which he was trying to do everyday tasks one-handed.

He'd relented when she'd promised Magnus would pick him up just around the corner.

If anyone asked, she was planning to ask Magnus to tutor Max in history and alchemy.

No one had asked. No one had been in their way as they'd left. Magnus had taken charge of Max, and Maryse had unceremoniously given him a plain envelope containing the first message, labeled 'if I haven't picked up Max in time for dinner.' She'd kept it vague on purpose, trusting to Magnus to judge when the time had come to read it.

He'd held her eyes for a long moment and nodded.

She'd activated her anti-tracking rune before she'd set out. By now, the bag had been left as instructed, but not before she had seared a rune of binding into the ground beneath it. Anyone who came to collect would at least be stalled in getting away for long enough so she could confront them.

From her hiding spot, she had a good view of her bait, sitting by the side of the street as if someone had dropped it there and neglected to pick it back up while getting a quick drink or snack inside.

Given the kind of customers the Hunter's Moon entertained, theft wasn't usually an issue.

Maryse blinked, and there was a woman approaching the bag. She hadn't rounded a corner. She hadn't come up or down the alley. She hadn't come out of a building, and she had no stele in her hand with which she could have deactivated a glamor rune. She'd just appeared in mid-step, out of nowhere.

She was tall, and seeming even taller because she was so thin, dressed in jeans and a fur-lined jacket. Her hair was a rainbow of color, and to add to the strange appearance, she carried a guitar.

Warlock, was Maryse's first thought at the sudden appearance. If that woman was a warlock, however, she seemed odder than even Magnus Bane.

Warlock or not, she stood by the bag, looking at it but not reaching for it. Her head was cocked sideways as if she was listening to something only she could hear.

Then she turned slightly, her eyes focusing precisely on the spot where Maryse was hidden.

"You can come out now," she said. Though she wasn't speaking particularly loudly, her voice was pitched and directed so well that it felt as if she was standing right next to Maryse. "I know you're there."

There was an oddly compelling quality to the words, and Maryse found herself straightening without having made a conscious decision to do so.

"I take it you're Maryse," the woman said. She didn't sound annoyed. Actually, she didn't even sound particularly surprised.

Maryse inclined her head. "How'd you guess?"

"Family resemblance," the woman with the multi-hued hair said. "Alec and Izzy in looks, Jace in defiance. Weren't you told to leave the bag and get lost?"

"Not in those precise words."

"But with that meaning."

Maryse spread her hands. "As you say: They're my children. I had to know what this was about."

The woman nodded graciously. "I'm Charlie Gale. Call Magnus or Simon if you need someone to vouch for me." She stood back, leaning against the closest building without making any move to pick up the bag.

"Excuse me if I do," Maryse said. She glanced away from the other woman just long enough to find Magnus' number on her phone and push the dial button.

He picked up on the second ring.

The conversation was short and to the point.

"What'd he say?" Charlie asked when she hung up.

Maryse put her phone away. "He said he trusts you with his life and Alec's and that I should do the same."

A grin tugged on Charlie's lips. "Will you?"

"I'm not sure."

That brought her a chuckle from Charlie. "A mother's answer, I guess. Very well – I expect Jace will be able to live with waiting for his things a little while longer. How about we go someplace a little less public and I will answer what questions you wish to ask?"

Maryse's expression was guarded. "You were supposed to take this to Jace?"

When Charlie inclined her head, she continued: "But how would you have gotten there? Portals to Alicante are—"

"Allow me to show you," Charlie said, using the moment Maryse took to fish for a fitting but neutral word. Then, without warning, she whistled a note that made the older woman's ears hurt, and snatched up the bag. Had that sound just turned off the binding rune?

"Where do you propose we go?"

Charlie barely thought about it. "My home, if you don't mind." She extended a hand towards Maryse.

So she was a warlock after all, and about to make a portal?

Magnus had told her to trust this woman. Maryse told herself that she was armed and could defend herself if anything untoward happened. In the end, the thing that decided her was another one: This was her best shot at learning something more about what was going on. She took the offered hand.

Charlie turned, and Maryse felt as if she was being pulled through a steel mesh, her essence scraped and bruised by…

… the intermittent sounds that came from the Hunter's Moon? That couldn't be right…

The feeling subsided, and she found to her relief that she was still whole and apparently unhurt. She also still had all her weapons, as a surreptitious check turned out.

That was about all that was as it should be. A moment ago, they had been standing in a back alley in New York. Now, they were surrounded by forest.

"Sorry," Charlie said. "I'll take a more comfortable route out, but the closest bit of greenery we could have used would have been a way to walk."

"I don't understand." Maryse was sure she wasn't admitting to anything her face hadn't already betrayed.

The other woman gestured. "We just entered another dimension. It makes travelling easier and faster. Hold on."

*

The grip on Maryse's hand tightened, and she felt herself pulled along as Charlie took another step forward. This time, the transfer came smoothly, without any discomfort to speak of. They stepped into biting, cold air as the forest was replaced by a flat roof that was furnished more elaborately than some people's living rooms. Specifically, they were standing in a low planting tray with some growth that somehow managed to prevail in spite of the temperatures.

"Are we back in our dimension?" Maryse asked without following Charlie out of the planting tray.

"Yes," came the confirmation. "Same dimension, different country. Come on in. You're not dressed warmly enough to stay out here."

She'd already been cold, but hearing it said reinforced the feeling. Maryse felt herself shudder. She willed her feet to move and follow Charlie towards the single door that led into the building.

They went down a flight of stairs and through a door that made Maryse stop and blink at the amount of runes drawn on and around it. Most of them had to be from a warlock's repertoire. They weren't Nephilim runes in any case. She wasn't sure if that was reassuring or reason for concern.

The room they entered was a generous hybrid of living and dining room with a kitchen along one end. Three women were sharing the latter, weaving around each other as if moving along choreographed patterns that kept them from ever colliding.

Several young children had turned the sofa and armchairs into a playground.

Charlie ushered Maryse past them and towards the large dining table.

"Sit. Have you had lunch yet?"

Maryse shook her head.

The oldest one of the three women in the kitchen seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. "You'll have to make do with some pie," she said. "It's not time for lunch here yet. Maybe we should think about moving New York into our time zone. Keeping track of the time difference is going to drive one of us crazy some day."

One of the other women laughed. "Auntie Gwen, even I can't move something as large as New York that far. Besides, where'd I put it? All the good city-places are already in use." She stepped around the other two, snatched up a plate that had for some reason been left out by the refrigerator, and loaded a piece of apple pie onto it.

"I'm Alysha Gale," she told Maryse as she deposited the plate in front of her. "Would you like some coffee or tea with that?"

The pie looked as delicious as it looked familiar. "Coffee would be great," Maryse said, a little distracted as she processed the situation. "Is this the same pie my children used to bring home from Magnus' loft?"

"I should hope not," the old woman in the kitchen said. "Pies don't usually live that long in our fridge and they never come back after we send them out."

"You know perfectly well what she meant, Auntie Gwen," Alysha scolded. "And answering the spirit of the question instead of its wording: Yes, it is."

"What do you mean by 'send them out'?" Maryse asked between the first two bites of pie. It was as delicious as she remembered it.

"We send pies to all the family members who aren't living at home," Alysha said. "And the adopted family members, too. If we keep ours well fed through college, we can keep yours fed in Alicante. Besides, they need it."

Charlie had collected a piece of her own and sat down across from Maryse. "They're charmed for protection," she explained. "If you're not trustworthy – if you're harboring bad intentions or posing a risk, for us, for them, you're not going to find the pie particularly palatable."

"How can anyone not find it particularly palatable?" Maryse asked. Then she remembered. "Wait - I think I may have seen the effect of that once. Someone tried a piece and got sick. He claimed the pie was bad, but I ate the same one …"

"That," Charlie said. "And I'm really glad at least one of their parents likes the pie. I hear your husband didn't."

"What?" Maryse's hand froze half-way to the coffee cup.

"I hear he thought that anything in the fridge was free for him to take, so he tried a piece and found it disgusting," Charlie clarified. "He spit it out at once, so he probably didn't feel a lot of the effect otherwise, but he wasn't… shall we say: well-intentioned?"

"Could this be because he's angry that the children are not accepting his affair as willingly as he'd like?" she asked. She and Robert were estranged, but he still was her children's father, and she didn't want to believe that there was anything going on in addition to his anger at the fact that the children were standing behind her.

Charlie shook her head. "Unlikely. I think Alec and the others should tell you the rest of it. It's not our news to share."

Auntie Gwen scoffed. "Don't be difficult, Charlotte."

"I'm not being difficult," Charlie shot back. "I'm being considerate of other people's secrets." Turning back to Maryse, she added: "A concept that our aunties are not particularly familiar with."

"Because it's not worth the effort most of the time," Gwen informed them. "If you weren't going to tell her anything, why did you bring her here?"

"I didn't say I wasn't going to tell her _anything_ ," Charlie protested. "It seemed that she had questions. Which I intend to answer as far as I can."

Now four pairs of eyes were looking expectantly at Maryse.

She put down her cup. The coffee was as good as the pie. "What are you?" she asked, her original questions momentarily forgotten. "You're not Nephilim. You're not warlocks – I can see the family resemblance, and those children look very much like they are yours, too. Are you Seelie? Did I just eat Seelie food?" Strangely, that concerned her less than it should – possibly because she as well as her children had been eating that same food for a while without any ill effects.

"Most of us are not," Charlie told her. "Auntie Gwen's husband is a leprechaun, and mine is half dragon. My cousin Melissa just hooked up with a full-blooded Court – a Seelie knight, in your terms. We're… not something that fits very well into your way of classifying the world, which by the way, is a weird way to go about things anyway."

"You had something to do with my children's disappearance a few weeks ago?" She made it a question, but she didn't have the least doubt.

"Yes and no," Charlie said. "We helped them out of the fix someone else got them into. It was—"

Maryse raised a hand to stop her. "I don't want to know. That is, I want to know, but I know Alec, Izzy and the others thought it was too risky to spread that knowledge while there's a risk that someone might use my youngest son to pressure me into anything. How are you in contact with them?"

"We gave them phones when they left." That was Alysha answering. "Special phones. They found out how special on their first night in Idris."

"Also, I drop by now and then," Charlie said. "Clary has a knack for getting into the Wood, but she's very much a beginner."

"So the text I got really came from Alec?" Maryse asked. She assumed the 'Wood' was the dimension they had travelled through. It had certainly been one.

Charlie nodded. "Jace wanted more variety in his wardrobe. And I think they wanted an excuse to talk to you anyway."

"How is Jace doing?" Maryse asked immediately. She had tried on more official channels and been denied before. The next moment, she almost wished she hadn't asked. She dreaded the answer.

"He's doing alright," Charlie told her. "Won't let anything keep him down. His grandmother brought him home the moment the hospital was done with him, but that didn't work out very well – so he and Clary moved in with Alec and Izzy."

"Clash of personalities?" Maryse guessed.

Charlie shrugged. "Apparently, his grandmother wanted to keep him safe and tried to forbid him to go out. That didn't go over too well with him. So if you'll take some advice from me? Let him be the one who decides what he can or can't do. He doesn’t need someone else trying to hold him back."

"Advice duly noted," Maryse said. "You'll take me along when you deliver his things? Through the Wood?"

"If you wish," Charlie said. "And I promise I'll also drop you off in New York again afterwards."

*

They came out in the patch of garden behind the house. It was very clear that Charlie had been here before – even if she hadn't been told about it, Maryse would have realized it from the way she sidestepped that one loose flagstone in the path leading up to the house that always shifted unpleasantly underfoot.

"I didn't bring any keys," Maryse realized when they reached the door.

Charlie laughed. "Don't worry. The door will recognize me." She gave it a gentle push with her flat palm, and it swung open.

Maryse frowned. "They shouldn't leave the house unlocked."

"It's not unlocked," the other woman told her. "We put some charms on the lock, is all."

They crossed the training room and moved into the main portion of the house.

"Anyone home?" Charlie called out as soon as they'd entered the corridor.

"Here!" Izzy called back from the living room.

The women exchanged a glance and followed her voice.

The four young Nephilim were seated around the low table, leaning over an assortment of pages with hand-written notes. Pens and notebooks were distributed generously across the table, the paper chaos interrupted by plates of pie and cups of coffee.

Alec was the first to look their way.

"Mom! You didn't need to come in person!" He sounded surprised, rather than appalled at the fact. "Where's Max?"

"With Magnus," Maryse said. She put the bag down. "The things you asked for."

"Thank you," Jace told her. "You have no idea what that means to me."

She thought that she did. His face had lit up at the sight. She took a moment to study him. Jace was sharing one of the sofas with Isabelle and Clary, the only indication that something was not entirely alright the empty wheelchair parked next to it. The jeans he was wearing looked as if he had borrowed them from Alec.

Alec, whose face had gone very still as he snapped his notebook shut. "Mom, can you sit down? We have some things to tell you. They aren't good."

She watched them watch her as she sat on the free sofa. "Is this about Robert and the pie?

"In part. What do you know?"

"Not much," she admitted. "I know about the warning function and that he triggered it."

"He tried to spy on us, too," Izzy said. "He bugged the house."

That took her aback for a moment. Some things suddenly made sense. "Not very successfully. He contacted me thrice this last week to ask me if I had any extra wards set up on the house or if I was keeping any artifacts there. I told him no and asked him why he wanted to know; he said he was worried about your safety."

" _We_ put up the wards," Alec said. "First thing when we came in. We expected someone to try to listen in on us, but we didn't expect it to be our own father."

"We hid them because they're not conventional," his sister added. "Mom, I know that going by the advice of a piece of pastry sounds a bit … odd … but can you promise us that you won't leave Max alone with him? Ever?"

"I'll do what I can," she said. Not because of the pie, but because her children seemed very sincere about this, and she was willing to trust their judgment. "What do you mean by 'not conventional'?"

"They're charms," Alec said. "Gale charms, not Shadowhunter runes. They're safer."

"You know we don't do magic." Maryse hoped she didn't sound too disapproving.

Alec at least didn't seem to take offence. "They're no more or less magic than our runes are. They're designs you put on things to get a result. Speaking of which, Charlie – were you going to do something about the doors?"

"The doors?" Now Maryse was confused. Charlie wasn't, though. She merely nodded and left the room.

"The door frames are a bit narrow," Jace told Maryse. "I have to aim very precisely to get through without scraping on the wood. Charlie is just going to put a few charms on them so they'll expand a bit when I need them to."

"Just." Maryse's voice was dry.

"Allie – that's Charlie's cousin – made her backyard twice the size it used to be without affecting the buildings around it so the family could fit all its cars there. So yeah, getting the frames to give way by a couple of inches at need is 'just'." He was grinning as he explained it.

"Auntie Bea was going to just send us the charms," Isabelle added. "But there are some things we don't necessarily want to experiment with when we're not sure what we're doing, and changing the internal dimensions of the building we live in is somewhere near the top of that list."

This entire conversation felt very surreal to Maryse. "I appreciate that," she said anyway. She needed something less unusual to ground herself against all this new information that she didn't even dare ask for more details about. "What have you been up to all day?"

"The usual," Alec told her. "Getting Clary some training and making sure we don't get out of shape ourselves."

"I think I should get a bow," Jace said. "It seems a smarter choice of weapon to use from horseback than throwing knives are."

"You're not going werewolf hunting in Brocelind Forest, are you?" Maryse asked. It was the first thing she could come up with. Her first instinct would have been an exclamation of surprise at the fact that Jace was thinking about riding a horse when he couldn't even walk, but she had remembered the warning she'd been given.

It seemed that Jace understood her anyway. He laughed. "Nice save, Maryse. No, I am not going to go werewolf hunting in Brocelind Forest. Not unless a werewolf tries to hunt me first. But I'd feel better about being out alone if I had a good weapon, and I can't always ask Alec to ride with me. I'm more concerned about running into that Nightshade guy than a werewolf, though…"

"Who?" Maryse hadn't heard that name in over a decade, but it immediately sent a chill down her back.

"It appears that we have someone walking around Alicante wearing the face of Nicholas Nightshade," Alec said. "Show her, Clary."

Clary picked a sketch out of the paper strewn across the table and held it out to Maryse, who took it and frowned at it.

"Similar," she said, the relief nearly palpable for her. "But not the same."

"Older," Alec pointed out. "The killings happened twelve years ago. You have to age up the image of him that you have in your mind."

Of course. Maryse put the portrait onto the table before she could drop it as if it had turned into hot coals in her hands. "Who is he?"

Alec handed the drawing back to Clary. "We don't know. Someone wearing Nightshade as a glamor. Must be, because the real one is locked up in the City of Bones."

"And after twelve years, he wouldn't be functional enough to walk around Alicante and try to break into houses," Jace added.

Maryse felt her face lose its color. "He tried to break in here?"

"No. It was the Fairchild townhouse." Clary put her portrait away where it had come from.

"Have you reported this to anyone?"

"Clary told Inquisitor Herondale," Alec said, his tone reassuring. "That's how we know about the murders. And the sentence. She wouldn't tell us any more about him, but we found the old newspapers in the library archive. Only the paper ones, because _someone_ deleted the database copies."

"Someone deleted the database copies of the newspapers that reported on the crimes of a man whose face someone is using as a glamor right now?" Maryse summarized, unwilling to believe what she had heard without confirmation that she had heard correctly.

They all nodded.

"More," Isabelle added. "If you put 'Nicholas Nightshade' into the search box, you get precisely zero hits. It's not just the articles - He's been purged from the database entirely. We've been going through what we have – which isn't much – to find out why anyone would do that."

"Maybe to keep people from accidentally stumbling over it," Maryse suggested. "Even the rumors that were going around back then were bad enough to give you nightmares.

"It's a recent development," Isabelle said. "The archivist I got the paper issues from said people kept coming to check them out, and they looked really used. So he was findable until recently."

Looking at the sheets of paper they'd been perusing, Maryse realized that they were handwritten copies of some of those articles. She scanned one of them, noting where words were underlined or marked with comments. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because working with the photos we took on the phones is really tedious," Alec told her.

She shot him a hard look. "You know that's not what I meant. Why are you doing this?" She gestured at the table. "You will hardly find anything about whoever is impersonating him in that. And you shouldn't get in the way of any investigations Inquisitor Herondale may conduct."

"We know he's been around a place that we are also around," Alec returned. "It is only logical to assume we will run into him again. Knowing about the person he pretends to be may help us understand what he wants, and take measures. Besides, we need _something_ to do."

"What do you remember about him?" Isabelle asked as soon as her brother was done.

It didn't escape Maryse's notice that she had picked up a notebook and a pen.

Well, at least researching a criminal safely locked away in the City of Bones was going to put them at less risk than trying to lay a trap for whoever was using his face, Maryse thought. She didn't allow herself to think about how the one could very well be preparation for the other.

"He killed eight people before he was caught—no. That's wrong. He killed eight Nephilim. As far as I know, no one ever found out how many mundanes and downworlders he killed."

"We know that," Alec said. "That was in the newspapers."

"How did he kill?" Isabelle's pen was poised.

Maryse took a deep breath. "This is mostly hearsay," she cautioned them. "There never was an official statement on this. But people talk… and people talked about how the murders were set up to look like demon sacrifices. The victims were mutilated beyond recognition, or would have been if we hadn't had their runes to identify them by. He burned them. He carved them up. He removed pieces and … arranged them. He did most of that while they were still alive. He arranged other things around them, too."

"Things like what?" Clary was sketching, putting the images her mind responded with on paper as Maryse talked.

"Feathers, mostly. Eagle feathers. He must have killed animals as well as people."

Golden eagles were the largest birds of prey that lived and roosted in Idris. They had thought it to be a statement on his position as the apex predator.

"There was a lot of speculation going around of course," Maryse continued. "After he was sentenced and taken to the City of Bones, there were some who thought he must have been tainted by demon blood somehow. Others were very adamant that he wasn't."

"Why is that?" Alec tried to sound detached, but he had gone tense.

"Because Nephilim/demon hybrids are so incredibly rare we can just as well assume they don't exist. But they checked his blood just in case. If there had been any demon blood in him, they surely would have made it widely known. It would have been a very convenient solution to the question of how any Nephilim could go that bad."

Alec seemed to only be listening with half an ear anymore. "This body untainted by demon blood…" he muttered. "Maybe that's what that referred to."

"What?" Maryse frowned at her eldest. That made no sense to her at all.

Alec heaved a sigh. "Magnus talked to—oh dammit. Mom, there is more to this than you know so far."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "I'm not surprised."

"The person with the Nightshade face was involved in an attempt to abduct us and feed us to a powerful demon as a sacrifice." It was clear he didn’t see how he could get out of the situation anymore without telling her at least the bare basics of what had happened during their absence. Maryse felt chilled all over again at the thought. "He tortured Magnus and very nearly killed him. None of us would be here now if it hadn't been for the Gales." He nodded towards Charlie, who had returned with a plate and a piece of pie of her own and dropped on the sofa's armrest.

She acknowledged his words with a generous inclination of her head.

"He had a warlock's help. Magnus tracked him down. He wasn't very helpful. The warlock, that is. But he said he overhead the Nightshade guy say that – about the demon blood. It didn't make a lot of sense."

"It still doesn't make _a lot_ of sense," Jace threw in. "But maybe we have a place to start."

Leaning forward, Maryse put her elbows on the table and pressed the fingers of her hands against each other. "I know the agreement was a different one, but I think we've come to where I need to know what's actually going on if I want any chance at all to find some sleep tonight."

Alec gave her a long look. Then he nodded once, slowly. "Can't promise that you'll sleep any better afterwards," he said.

He nodded at his sister.

Isabelle started to tell her about how she had ended up with the Gales. Then, taking turns, they summarized what had happened and what they had learned.

Alec was right, Maryse thought. She didn't think the new information would be very conducive to a sound sleep.

They ended with the current status of affairs.

"I think I need some time to process all of this," Maryse admitted when they were done. "And I probably should get back to New York before my absence is noted."

"I'll take you back a few hours," Charlie said. "It'll be safer if you're not off the radar all afternoon.

That was undeniably true.

Alec and Izzy stood as she and Charlie did, and Maryse hugged each of them in turn before leaning down for Jace.

"I'd tell you to be careful and stay safe, but that seems useless, all things considered," she said. "And I really wish I could give you more help with any of the rest… but here's one more thing I remembered: If you really think you need to find out more about the original Nightshade, try to find his last victim."

"His last victim?" Alec asked, frowning. "The one he killed when they caught him?"

Maryse shuddered involuntarily. "The one he didn't kill. There were eight dead, and then they caught him while he was … working … on the ninth, but he hadn't gotten around to killing her yet. I don't know what became of her. I don't know if her name was ever disclosed. But I know she existed."


	15. Chapter 15

Imogen Herondale got out of her coach alone.

She'd returned home last night to find Jace and Clary gone. Phillip swore that the only people who had walked past him had been Alec and Isabelle Lightwood, and he was sure no one had been with them. Not even glamored. Certainly not Jace.

The building had more exits, but all of them were secured and none of them had been opened that night. And yet, Jace and Clary were gone, their things gone with them except for that one large painting Clary had been working on – that had probably been too large to carry. They had left it propped against a wall in Clary's room.

Jace had left a note for her on his desk, written out in a cursive that he must have taken a long time to perfect.

 "Dear Grandmother," it had read, "I'm sorry that you have to worry so much about me, but I cannot be a prisoner. Not even yours." He'd simply signed it "Jace".

She didn't know how they had gotten out of the house, but she was certain she knew where they had gone.

She'd given it a full day. Surely by now he would have realized that he'd be better off at Herondale Manor, where there was staff and where he could have someone to assist him with whatever needs he had. She couldn't imagine the Lightwoods filling that position. She couldn't imagine Jace letting them either.

She was resolved to be reasonable. This was partially her fault, and she knew it. She should have gone about things more calmly the other day. Tonight, she was going to do better.

The door opened, and she found herself looking into the eyes of Alec Lightwood. He didn't look too surprised to see her, but his expression was guarded.

"Hello, Alec," she said, making an effort to keep her voice friendly. "I need to speak with Jace."

He didn't even make an effort to deny that Jace was there. Neither did he move from where he was effectively blocking her way into the house.

"Jace?" he called over his shoulder. "Inquisitor Herondale's here to talk to you."

She didn't know if he'd done that on purpose, but hearing it gave her a little sting. So she was 'Inquisitor Herondale'. Not Jace's grandmother.

It took a little while before Jace appeared in the corridor behind Alec. Imogen found it hard to watch him approach. He should have been on his feet, she thought, smiling and ready to conquer the world. He looked so vulnerable, sitting in that wheelchair. No Herondale had ever looked vulnerable.

He had taken the armrests off, which almost made her wince. How long until he was going to end up toppling out sideways and hurting himself?

Alec stepped aside just enough to let him take his place. He made no move to leave them alone, and Jace made none to request that he do so.

It didn't escape her notice that he was wearing jeans that weren't his own. He was going to hurt himself in his determination to defy every piece of advice he'd been given.

Unwilling to start the conversation on a reprimand, Imogen forced the thought away.

"May I come in?" she asked instead, putting a calm tone into her voice.

With something that could have been a shrug or simply part of a movement to reach for the rims on his wheels, Jace moved back a little, clearing enough space to let her step into the corridor and close the door behind her. He didn't invite her in any farther than that.

"If you've come to bring me back, the answer is no," he said quietly.

She sighed. "I know I haven't been at my best, Jace," she told him. "I can do better than that. I wanted only your best. I still do. But I never meant to make you feel like a prisoner in your own home."

"This is my home," Jace said, gesturing around him. "So no harm done."

It didn't even sound particularly sarcastic.

"Don't you think you'll be more comfortable at Herondale Manor?" she asked. "You wouldn't have to ask your friends for help all the time there."

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I'd rather be where I can get into and out of the house, and to and from my bedroom without any help at all."

"I'm not going to tell Phillip to keep you anywhere against your will again, Jace," she promised. "Even if it's only to keep you safe. He'll just have to—" keep you safe otherwise, she wanted to say, but she suddenly felt that wouldn’t go over well either.

Jace shook his head. "I'm staying."

"Alec and Isabelle will not be here forever," Imogen pointed out calmly. "They will go back into the field some day. Clary will go back into the field. What will you do then?" How could he not understand that he belonged with the part of his family that was permanently living in Idris?

"I'll go with them," Jace said, his tone matching hers. "Well, not on the actual missions, but I can sit around in an Institute as well as I can in Alicante. I can plan missions. I can take care of logistics and acquisitions and I can man the communications hub. I can still be part of the team. A _valuable_ part of the team."

He sounded like he'd thought about that. It made her sad to think of how he was deluding himself. She could just about imagine how Alec would feel if Jace planned his missions for him. Surely he'd have to wonder every single time if this was the time Jace got his revenge on him for the injury he had inflicted.

"And what does Alec say to that plan?" she asked. Her gaze shifted to the other young man, her eyes piercing and daring him to lie.

Alec squared his shoulders. "I can't think of anyone I'd rather have my missions planned by."

She saw no lie in his face, and Alec always wore his feelings openly. Either these young men were far more naïve than she had thought, or their trust in each other ran deeper than she could ever have imagined.

"I'll at least send in Phillip then." She'd have to try again in a few days, after he had had more time to run into situations that he couldn't handle on his own. But she couldn't leave him helpless until then.

He shook his head firmly. "No. I do not want Phillip near me. He's your man, not mine. I will not be handled by someone in another person's pay again." There was an edge to his tone that surprised her. Surely he didn't have the funds to pay for an assistant of his own!

"But you need—" she started.

He cut her off. "What I _need_ to do is be in charge of my own life, grandmother. I cannot have anyone else make decisions for me. Is that so hard for you to accept?"

"I do only want your best, Jace." She sounded defensive now. She wasn't sure what the right thing to say was at this point. No matter what she did say, it only seemed to make things worse.

"You don't decide what's best for me."

She swallowed. He was so young, so convinced that he could handle anything. He would be in for a hard crash.

"So what would you have me do?" She asked instead of speaking her thoughts out loud.

"Nothing," he said flatly. "Just let me live my own life in the way I choose. In the place I choose. Though you could return my missing things to me."

She didn't pretend not to know what he was talking about. "I told them those could be given away," she admitted.

"You didn't think that maybe it would have been appropriate to discuss that with _me_ first?" The glint in Jace's eyes didn't bode well for any true reconciliation being achieved this night.

She met the glare he directed at her anyway. "They explained how they wouldn't be of any use to you anymore."

"They were still my things," Jace pointed out. "They weren't yours to give away."

"You're right." She could see his point, in a way, though she was sure he would have come to the same conclusion if he had allowed himself to actually think the matter through. "I'm sorry."

"Easy to say now that it's done."

She had acted with her best intentions, but it seemed now that by doing so, she had effectively lost him. For the moment at least. Surely there were still ways to fix that. There had to be. "I can see if I can get them back."

He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Don't bother. Just make sure Phillip stays out of my way."

She nodded. What else could she do?

"I should get going then. My coach is waiting outside." Besides, she feared that she had already overstayed her welcome. "Take care of yourself, Jace."

"Sure," he said.

She had already turned and reached for the door handle when he spoke up again.

"Grandmother?"

She half-turned back, wondering what it was he had just thought of.

"Who was Nicholas Nightshade's last victim? The one he didn't kill?"

The smile she had put on froze on Imogen's face. "I don't know what you mean." It wasn't true. The name had sprung to her mind the moment he had said it. She'd never forget the woman's face. Or her name. Or the testimony she'd never been able to make in court. But as long as there was an unknown person out there impersonating Nicholas Nightshade, and as long as she didn't know why he had been all but purged from all records, she wasn't going to let Jace or his friends get involved with anything connected to him.

Pivoting back, she left before he could call her out on her lie.

*

Jace was stretched out on the bed, face-down and stripped to his underwear. His arms and shoulders were sore from all the work they had done during the day, and the upper part of his back was so tense that stabs of pain were running through him every time he moved now.

He wasn't complaining. It was the expected outcome of an excess helping of new exercise.

Alec had been right when he'd said they couldn't make it seem as if they knew his condition was going to be temporary.

So instead of focusing on the transcription that morning, he had merely browsed the book to familiarize himself with the handwriting and the style, and spent the rest of his time on Google and YouTube. Then he'd started to practice. By the time he'd had to begin working on their lunch, he had acquired some basic skill in moving between different locations, getting onto the floor without actually letting himself drop, and back up with a lot less effort than he had had to expend before.

He had also learned that there was no way he would ever manage to move the chair he had up curbs or across other obstacles. That required tipping it back and balancing on the large wheels – which would have been a neat thing to do, given all the other things that apparently permitted.

Jace had no doubt that he'd be able to pick that skill up quickly enough – his sense of balance was impeccable even without rune enhancement. His chair, however, didn't tilt, and the reason for that was that it was constructed with anti-tipping bars. They didn't come off. He knew that because he'd tried.

With the chair only lent to him, he didn't think it would go over very well if he simply sawed through them.

As soon as he had started to put his plans for lunch into practice, he ran into another unexpected problem: The kitchen wasn't made to be used from a sitting position. The counter was too high for him to work on well, and so was the stove.

Realizing that he was going to risk pouring hot water or frying oil on himself that way – both things he really didn't fancy even with an _iratze_ at hand – he had almost been willing to admit defeat and ask Alec to swap kitchen duty with him.

He had reconsidered at the last moment, collected all the utensils and ingredients that he would need before backing the chair against the counter, where he had pulled his feet up onto the seat to get them somewhat closer to where they needed to be when he was done. Putting his newfound skills to use, he had hoisted himself up onto the counter, and arranged everything around him.

That worked, though Maryse and Robert would surely have had a thing or two to say about it.

Alec and Izzy didn't mind.

He'd borrowed riding clothes from Alec before they'd left, and taken forever to change. Jeans were definitely harder to put on than track pants.

Clary had been marginally less insecure on Brownie today, but they quickly came to the conclusion that having advanced riders share the same square didn't help. So Jace and Alec had removed themselves from the general vicinity, taking a leisurely ride along the fringes of Alicante.

With no one insisting they hurry and get back to Herondale Manor, he took the time to brush Crusader when they were done. That was when he'd first felt the sting in his arms and shoulders.

Adding a little workout in the gym with Alec while Izzy and Clary were working on languages and history probably had been a bit too much.

By the time they had settled down to pursue their Nightshade project, he'd been glad he wouldn't have to do a great many more transfers that day.

By the time he'd been done with his grandmother, he'd been ready to just drop into bed and sleep through the night and half the morning, which of course wasn't an option.

Now, Clary was doing her very best to rub the tension out of his muscles, and they were both realizing that it wasn't working. Her strength and skill simply didn't live up to the amount of tension muscles built up over a decade and a half of training could produce.

There was a knock on the door, and Jace tried not to groan as he called his _parabatai_ in. He knew Alec's knock.

"You left the bag Mom brought in the living room," Alec announced, dropping the object next to the door. He paused, and Jace could imagine him taking in the scene in front of him. "What are you two trying to do?"

"I'm failing at getting him to relax a bit," Clary confessed. Her tone wavered between laughter and frustration.

Alec walked closer. "Do you want me to give it a try? I think I may have more of a chance at getting through that mess."

"Be my guest," Jace said without lifting his head from the pillow. He didn't even bother to point out that the 'mess' Alec was talking about was his back.

Clary moved, and Alec took her place.

Jace felt the difference the moment Alec set to work. It wasn't just that he had the strength that Clary lacked – enough to wrestle his tense muscles into submission. He went for the worst spots almost immediately, gently probing and then aggressively attacking until Jace could feel the tension seep out of him.

"I need you to never stop this," he sighed, shifting ever so slightly to give Alec better access. "Did Magnus teach you this?"

"Melissa, actually," Alec told him. "Magnus was who I practiced on."

"Remind me to send both of them a thank-you card."

*

Alec wasn't sure just exactly what Jace had done to turn his shoulders, upper arms and back into what initially felt like one solid mass of stone. It wasn't surprising that Clary hadn't gotten anywhere with that. He took his time, working methodically and refusing to be hurried.

Most of them had some idea of how to loosen up muscles protesting after excessive exercise, but right now he thought the little extra instruction he had gotten was paying off.

He was beginning to suspect that he would feel the effort in his own arms by tomorrow morning as he slowly worked his way down Jace's back.

"How far down do you want me to go?" He had almost reached Jace's most recent scar. It was deceptively small – an oblong patch of shiny, slightly reddened skin that looked several months healed after all the rune treatment it had gotten.

Jace apparently had to think about what to tell him, and for a moment Alec thought he might have fallen asleep.

"You're in a much better position than I to judge how far down you need to go right now," the answer came eventually.

"Even if it's going where you don't feel it?" Alec needed to make sure.

"'s okay." Jace turned his head just far enough so he wasn't talking into his pillow. "I trust you."

Alec was surprised at the amount of tension in Jace's back below the level of the injury. While a difference was undeniable, he was sure it would have been enough to cause some degree of discomfort if Jace had been able to feel it.

He worked even more slowly there, knowing that he could only rely on how things felt under his hands. Jace wasn't going to be able to complain if he made a mistake.

"This should be done by someone trained for it," Alec pointed out as he worked.

"We don't have anyone who's more trained for it than you," Jace returned. "Careful if you touch my legs – some muscles twitch if you put pressure on the wrong spots."

"Huh?" That made Alec look even farther down, and now that he was checking for it, he could see that the muscles in Jace's legs were not, as he would have expected, completely relaxed and floppy.

"Do you want me to try?"

Jace nodded. "Circulation's bad anyway if you can't move on purpose, and cramps don't help with that…"

Alec ran his thumb over a stripe of skin that stood out from its surroundings by a slightly darker color. "I think you sat on something here."

Jace made an inarticulate sound. "Fold of clothing, probably. I thought I checked when I undressed. Guess I couldn't see it there."

"I'll put a Healing on it?" Alec asked, waiting for Jace's agreement before he did so.

Alec continued working carefully until he was sure that all of Jace's muscles had relaxed as far as he could get them to. There were some spots where touching only seemed to make the cramping worse.

He went over his _parabatai_ 's shoulders and back once more afterwards, rubbing the last of the tension out of them. This time, he could feel Jace melt under his hands.

Realizing the usual side effect of having a large amount of formerly cramping muscle mass relax, Alec interrupted his work.

"Jace? Are you still with us?"

Jace made a vague sound. "Barely," he muttered.

"Is there any reason you shouldn't fall asleep right now?"

He could feel some of the tension return as he asked.

"No," Jace said after a moment. "Done with everything for tonight. Did Clary tell you?"

While Clary instantly denied having told him anything, Alec shook his head, before realizing that there was no way Jace could see him the way they were positioned.

"Jace, since no one was going to talk to us anyway, we _googled_ to find out what we'd have to know. We didn't plan to have your grandmother snatch you away in the first place. Google isn't shy about inconvenient facts."

The inconvenient facts made Jace laugh. "Sorry," he said a moment later, a little sheepishly. "Yes, I'm perfectly okay to fall asleep right now, and ready to do so any moment if you keep that up a bit longer."

*

_November 23 rd, 2016_

Alec was out alone. This particular errand didn't need a group to complete.

He didn't even have to go about it secretly, and he was glad for that. It was a relief that for once, he could act openly.

It was even more of a relief when he ran into Aline Penhallow not far from his destination. She waved the moment she spotted him, and he waved back and stopped to wait for her to catch up.

"How is it going for you?" he asked her after a quick hug in greeting.

She gave him a happy smile. "It's going well," she said. Then her voice dropped, the next words only meant for the two of them. "Except I'm no closer to telling anyone, and I'm afraid her patience may run out before I scrape up the courage."

He reached out to give her arm a slight squeeze. "You'll find the courage when the time is right for you," he said. "I did."

She grinned at him. "One could argue about that having been the right time."

"Well, any time later would have been too late."

That was impossible to argue with.

"What are you up to?" she asked him, changing the subject.

Alec made a vague gesture with one hand. "Research. The only database access we have at home is in Dad's office and … let's say our relationship has become a bit strained recently. He's not very proud of Izzy and me right now."

Aline winced. "I'm sorry about that. What do you need to research?"

"It's not pretty," Alec warned her.

She beamed at him. "So tell me anyway. I can handle not pretty."

"Have you heard of a man called Nicholas Nightshade?"

Aline laughed "Like the Jack the Ripper of Alicante? Yeah. Who hasn't?"

Now that wasn't something he'd heard him called before, but he figured it was as fitting as anything. "Well, we hadn't until a few days ago," Alec admitted. "But here's the thing: right now, someone's walking around wearing him as a glamor."

A frown creased her forehead. "Why would anyone do that?"

He shrugged. Then he gave her the entire story, as far as it was officially on record: Their observation by the Fairchild house. Clary's conversation with Imogen. The deleted newspaper copies and their success with the paper ones. Imogen's refusal to share the name of his surviving victim.

"What do you hope to get from her?" Aline asked.

"To be honest, we don't know," Alec admitted. "But she's the only lead we have at this point. If we run into him again, we want to be prepared. You don't choose that kind of face at random. "

"You realize that she may not want to talk about what happened back then, or about Nightshade, even if you find her?" Aline pointed out.

"It's been twelve years."

She made a face. "I don’t think time matters so much." She looked away for a moment. "Promise me that you won't push if she doesn't want to talk to you?"

Surprised, Alec nodded. "You know who she is?"

"No," Aline said. "But I'll help you find out if you like."

"I was going to go with the assumption that since he was caught in the middle of … whatever it was he was doing … she would have taken a while to recover, so I was going to get a list of people who went inactive around that time and then work through them to discard anyone who can't be her," he said. "Kind of complicated, but the best we could come up with so far."

They had made it through the entrance of the library in the meantime and were standing in the foyer, where they could still talk without whispering.

"How about we start by sending a fire message to my mother?" Aline asked. "She might remember a name."

Alec pulled a small notebook and a pencil out of the inner pocket of his jacket and handed them to her. "That would be amazing!"

He watched her write, taking her time with her phrasing.

They went and secured a research station while they waited for an answer, and Alec pulled up the Shadowhunter lists for 2004. There were two "Nightshades" listed, but neither of them was Nicholas. He tapped them, and found them to have been a couple in their late thirties, both marked as deceased on the same date in February 2004. They could easily have been Nicholas' parents. Marrying young and having children early was common among the Nephilim, to compensate for their frequent early deaths in the field.

Tapping the date of death, he ended up with a 'no results' screen.

He saw Aline raise her eyebrows at it.

Alec took his time putting together his search request. They knew the date on which Nightshade had been captured, so he knew which date he was starting out on, but he wasn't sure how much time he wanted to cover after that.

Before he could come to a decision, a fire message for Aline arrived.

She read it and handed the sheet to him.

Aline's mother was not pleased with the request. It appeared that she considered digging in old crime cases a waste of time. Besides, she wrote, Aline should have been well past the age of collecting creepy stories about Nightshade.

 _If you are bored enough to seek some thrill in digging in dusty cases like that, I am sure we can find some more challenging assignment for you,_ she had written.

"Now what?" Alec asked her as he handed the letter back.

She gestured at the screen. "Now we dig deeper."

*

After a quick fire message to Clary to make sure that they could accommodate one more, Alec invited Aline to join them for lunch.

Even splitting up and taking on half the datasets the system had spit out each, they hadn't made it all the way through. There were few with enough detailed information included to be discarded immediately. Most of the time, they needed to actually pull up a separate window and check what other entries showed up for the person in question.

So far, they were reasonably sure that the woman they were looking for hadn't been among those they'd reviewed.

"What if she's been deleted, too?" Aline asked as they were just entering the Lightwood residence.

"His parents were still there," Alec pointed out. If he hadn't been certain before, the fact that their deaths were linked to a blank page had made him sure of it. He'd been somewhat relieved about it. It suggested that whoever had removed Nightshade had only done so superficially, rather than going after every single link.

Clary, doubtlessly, was a much better cook than Izzy. The house smelled delicious, and Alec suddenly felt twice as hungry as he had been on the way home.

He stopped for a quick look into the kitchen, only to be shooed right back out by the chef of the day.

Laughing, he stepped back into the corridor, where Aline stood, frozen in her tracks.

Izzy and Jace had come out to say hello.

"Oh Jace," she said as she looked him up and down. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine, Aline," Jace told her. "And it's good to be home."

"But you can't—" Aline started, breaking off in mid-sentence as if suddenly no longer sure that what she had been about to say was wise.

Jace's laugh carried the faintest edge of annoyance. "'Walk', Aline. The word you are looking for is 'walk'. I can still be _fine_."

She looked at him uncertainly.

"Aline, this is me. Jace. You know, the Jace who kicked your ass in training and who fell off his horse trying to copy that jump you did? I can still do _most_ things. I could play the piano for you if there was one in the house. I can speak multiple languages, dead and alive. I can still ride. I can throw knives and shoot a bow. I might even still be able to beat you hand to hand if I manage to get you off your feet and on the ground with me because I'm larger and heavier than you are. I'm _fine._ Now come here and say hello properly."

He followed up the last with a bright smile and his arms held out for her to step into.

She moved then, stooping down slightly to give him a careful hug.

"I'm taller than you now," she said, which brought her a grin from Jace.

"That's more like it. And I promise I won't break apart."

"I'm sorry." Aline took a step back to give him space again. "You've always been so… invulnerable."

"I've never been invulnerable," Jace protested. "You should have known that after I messed up that jump and broke my collarbone."

"I think I forgot about that," she admitted, following him into the dining room, where he immediately started to finish setting the table – which was clearly what he and Izzy had been doing when they'd arrived.

"Shouldn't you be living in Herondale Manor like a prince?" Aline asked, obeying Alec's indication that she should sit down. "You realize that the revelation that there was still a Herondale heir alive was all over Alicante. Inquisitor Herondale made sure everyone knew when she came back from New York that time."

Jace made a face. "Let's say Inquisitor Herondale and I had some… philosophical differences."

"Regarding what?"

"Regarding the question of whether I'm fine," he said drily.

Alec covered the lower portion of his face with one hand to hide his expression. Was this how every meeting with old friends was going to go from now on?


	16. Chapter 16

_November 24 th, 2016_

The first day in the Lightwood house, Jace had resolved to use regular furniture as much as possible.

That resolve, in its original form, hadn't survived for very long.

Switching to the couch when they were all sitting together in the living room or even a chair at the dinner table for meals was fine – but when he was alone in the house, working on his transcriptions, it simply wasn't practical to move back and forth every time he had to go and get something. So he eventually just stayed in the wheelchair and merely wished the damned thing had been more comfortable. It simply wasn't made for permanent use, and he was starting to feel like these were going to be six very long weeks.

At least the diary transcription was going somewhere. So far, he had written out several pages of random accounts of incidents from early Alicante – nothing spectacular, but more proof that they had gotten their hands on something very old, even though the first entries weren't dated.

The handwriting was small and cramped, which didn't make it particularly easy to read. The old expressions didn't make it any easier. Names, often spelled creatively, were almost impossible to guess, and needed to be figured out by comparison of letters one by one with other occurrences in words he had been able to identify.

Reference books were now stacked on the table, and they were seeing good use.

Capping his pen after adding a mark to remind himself that this was where the original book had a page break, he turned the page to tackle the next part of the text. It took some careful smoothing down and weighting of the edges to get the book to lie flat, but the last thing he wanted to do was to keep his hand on it all the time to hold it in place while he was working.

Usually, vellum that old was soaked with grease and sweat to capacity and wouldn't absorb any more, which made it safer to touch without doing any damage to it.

With the preservation spells as thick on it as they were, however, he wasn't too sure in this case.

Besides that, he wanted to keep the personal contact between him and the book to a minimum, just in case they returned it and someone tried to trace who had handled it.

Presently, the author was writing about the choosing of new Nephilim, and how it now differed from the early days.

It made Jace grin every time he read anything along those lines. Apparently, there hadn't ever been a time when people hadn't yearned for the good old days.

There had been a few mentions of a man called Jonathan, and it gave him a little thrill every time he saw that name, wondering if this was Jonathan Shadowhunter he was reading about. If so, the author seemed to think that the first Nephilim had been a little rash in his decisions, reckless in his actions. And yet, the words spoke of a deep friendship.

He wondered if that was what Alec would have written about him, had he been keeping a similar journal.

From that thought, a wild idea spun itself in his mind for the first time, almost without any conscious contribution on his part.

Could it be…?

He called himself to order. Speculation was no good, and daydreaming about whose journal he might be looking at was only going to cloud his vision when he had to make judgment calls in places where his best guess was as good as the transcription was going to get.

The next few sentences were easy to parse, at least, and he filled the rest of his page with it before leaning over to get fresh paper from the stack they had brought him from the Fairchild House – luckily without running into Nightshade again. Even knowing that it was merely a glamor, they had started to call him that for the sake of convenience.

As he took a fresh sheet from the stack of loose paper he used for his rough transcription – he was going to copy it all out into a proper notebook again later, when he'd be able to read his first draft as a coherent text, which might permit him to figure out words he hadn't identified before with more knowledge of the context in which they appeared – an irregularity caught his eye.

There was an interruption in his paper stack that he hadn't paid any attention to before. It seemed that somehow, a few used pages had slipped between the fresh ones.

He teased them out, expecting to find notes from Jocelyn that he would set aside to give to Clary when she returned from her run and tracking training with Izzy.

Then he spotted the handwriting, and he froze.

It was a script that he was intimately familiar with. The two pages had been filled by the same hand that had written out his instructions when he had been a child. The same hand that he'd seen in the many notebooks documenting his and Jonathan Morgenstern's development.

He was looking at notes taken by Valentine.

Given that Valentine had been Jocelyn's husband, it shouldn’t have surprised him as much to find his handwriting on anything that came from her house.

Still, it took him a moment to regroup.

The journal momentarily forgotten, he started to read.

*

"Using magic to try and transfer the superior abilities of Diana's children to Nephilim was a mistake," Alec read out loud. "Instead of acting merely as the carrier as desired, it merged with the components isolated from downworlder blood to become a kind of virus – highly contagious if injected into the blood stream and causing the uncontrolled mutation we know today. The thought was a good one, but the execution must be improved. I believe that…"

He looked up. "That's where he was interrupted. Sounds to me like he drafted a letter."

The others nodded.

"He's talking about his experiments – he must be," Clary said. "Transferring downworlder abilities to Nephilim… Does the rest make any sense to you?"

"Not in the least," Izzy admitted.

"Who are Diana's children?" the other woman asked.

"No idea," Alec shook his head. "Possibly a euphemism for something. I've never heard of them before."

Izzy pulled out her phone. "Since we know that all the legends are true, why don't we start by checking the mundane internet for it? We can try our library tomorrow, at a more decent hour."

They waited, watching in anticipation as she typed. She started to grin as the results loaded. Then her expression darkened, and continued to darken while she scrolled.

"What is it?" Alec asked his sister.

Jace leaned over, trying to catch a glimpse of her screen.

Izzy turned the phone around to show them. "It appears that Diana's children are two mundane men who are … princes? This can't be right."

"Wrong Diana," Jace suggested.

She continued scrolling. "There's only the one in here."

"There's only one Diana on the entire internet? That can't be right. That thing is huge." They'd been surprised at _how_ huge when they'd first started going beyond the Nephilim networks and digging into the mundane ones.

Izzy stopped running her finger up the screen. "She's literally the only Diana who comes up for the combination 'Diana's children'. I conclude: Mundane internet doesn't know what Valentine was talking about."

Clary had her phone out as well. "Just going for Diana gives us a Roman deity," she announced. "Goddess of the hunt, moon, nature, wild animals and woodland." She looked around at the others.

Alec was wearing a thoughtful frown. "Hunt, moon, wild animals? Werewolves come to mind, but it seems like a long shot."

"The Valentine I knew wouldn't have said 'Diana's children' if he meant werewolves," Jace pointed out. "That's much too nice… too … not harsh enough. Even as Michael Wayland he wouldn't have done that."

"Combining 'Diana' and 'Werewolves' returns fanart," Izzy announced. "What is fanart?"

"Artwork people make of things they enjoyed," Clary told her. "Like books or movies. Fiction, mostly. Discard for our purposes." A moment later, she added: "Is it any good?"

Her friend laughed. "How would I know? You're the artist here." She held out the phone for Clary to look.

Clary gave a visible wince. "Uh, no," she said. "Most of these aren't … well, that one maybe. Or that." She turned back to her own screen. "I find nothing about wolves here. Deer and hunting dogs. Bow and arrows. Clearly she's for you, Alec."

"Which reminds me that we need to do something about my bow," Alec said. "I should find a replacement until we can have Magnus over so we can see if he can get anything from it. I don't want to do anything with it that might cover up any more tracks before that. I'd really feel better if I had a replacement that's better than what I have here."

"What do you have here?" Clary asked. "And when do I get archery lessons?"

Alec raised an eyebrow at her. "I didn't know you wanted archery lessons. The only bow I have here that I can conceivably still use is the one I shot before I got my special bow. But it's been years and I've put on more muscle since, so it's really too weak for me now."

"If you go bow-buying, I'm coming along," Jace announced. "'cause if I didn't know I'm just taking a break here, I'd definitely want to hone my skill with any weapon I can still be good with. Also, I need more exercise in my day. I'm starting to get fidgety."

"Right," Alec handed Valentine's draft back to Jace. "The bowyer it is tomorrow. And we can check for Diana's children in the library."

"And I'm really interested in Shadowhunter illnesses all of a sudden," Clary threw in. "He's writing about 'a kind of virus'."

Izzy got up from the sofa. "Before we try the library, why don’t we have a look at the encyclopedia we have in the house, _just in case_?" she asked. "There's always a chance it might spare us some embarrassment tomorrow."

"She has a point." Jace was looking at the note again. "Tell me if I'm reading too much into this, but to me it sounds as if Valentine's implying he wasn't the first one to experiment with downworlder blood to enhance Nephilim. And not the first one who failed to achieve the desired results either."

Alec gave him a nod. "I don't think you're reading too much into it. But without any kind of timeline, it doesn't help us any. Besides which, I'm not sure it's relevant to anything we've been working on anyway…"

"If so, it's another piece of history that's been kept from us," Izzy pointed out as she slammed a thick volume down on the table and started to leaf through it. "And frankly, I'm getting tired of selective disclosure."

"If that study was used by Valentine, we should have a closer look at the books in there," Clary said.

"If that study was used by Valentine, I wonder why the Clave never cleaned it out and got rid of whatever was in it after the Uprising," Izzy mused. She turned a page back and forth several times, checking the entries on either side. "Nope, nothing here."

 "Not sure if I'm relieved or annoyed by that," Alec told her. "And do you know what _I_ wonder about that study being used by Valentine?"

They looked at him.

"I wonder what Nightshade _was_ hoping to find in that building. He complained to Magnus about Clary stabbing Valentine, and he as much as told the neighbors he'd been a friend of Valentine's…"

"It all connects somehow," Jace said as he slid the page into the folder they had started to keep their notes in. "Except that the original Nightshade may be entirely unconnected and his face chosen only because he was certain he wouldn't run into himself in Alicante."

"He could have used any mundane face for that," Alec objected. "And it's not like the one he's using is giving him any advantage when he shows up anywhere. It's definitely not inconspicuous since some people will recognize it even aged-up as it is. So I'm going with the assumption that it's a statement, and Nightshade is relevant."

*

_November 25 th, 2016_

The bowyer's shop was narrower than Alec remembered it.

On second thoughts, it was entirely possible that it had always been this narrow, and they'd just never noticed it because previously they'd always all been on their feet and able to weave around each other.

The look the man in charge of the shop gave them clearly said: It would have been better if your friend had waited outside.

Jace had chosen to ignore that, and Alec figured that if it was good enough an approach for Jace, it would be good enough an approach for him.

He knew what he was looking for, and there were a number of risers laid out before him that he tried to see how they fit his grip. He wasn’t going to invest into having a bow personalized for him, the way he would if he had needed a permanent replacement. While he fully expected to have his regular bow in working order before he went back into the field, he was looking for something serviceable that wasn't insanely expensive.

The clerk's eyes were darting back and forth between him and Jace continually. What was he expecting them to do? Steal one of the bows?

"You're the Herondale boy," he said eventually, talking roughly in Jace's direction. "That's where I've seen you before."

"The Herondale boy who's planning to buy a bow from you when his _parabatai_ is done finding one," Jace pointed out. "And who, in contrast to Mr. Lightwood there doesn't know his draw, nor the best poundage, by heart, so if you want us to clear the shop again speedily for more patrons, you might start on collecting some that I can try out instead of standing there and watching us as if you expect us to make off with the goods."

Ah, so it hadn't been Alec's impression alone.

" _You_ want to buy a bow?" The man asked. "For yourself?"

Jace nodded.

"But you're not going to go back into the field."

"So? I may want to go hunting game in Brocelind Forest. Or just get some exercise in on the shooting range. Or I might want to hang it on my wall for decoration."

Alec bit his lip to hold back a laugh as he spotted the man's expression from the corner of his eye. "Some of these are very decorative," he allowed.

"In any case," Jace continued, "I believe the only thing that limits my ability to buy bows is the content of my wallet. Which is actually pretty decent."

"He's your _parabatai_?" the man asked, pointing at Alec.

Jace must have nodded, because he went on: "I heard he's the one who crippled you."

"You heard wrong," Jace snapped. "Alec, is there another bowyer anywhere nearby? One who doesn't insult his customers and perpetuate vile rumors?"

"I have no idea," Alec said gloomily. "Might be part of the trade." It was clear that Jace was losing his patience with the man, and Alec couldn't deny that he was feeling the same way. He did know other shops that sold bows, but most of them were a way to walk, and they'd planned to join Clary and Izzy in the library sometime this morning.

He took two of the risers and pushed the others aside. "I'd like to try these, please," he said. "And if you find Jace an assortment to try out, we won't have to go out onto your range twice. Unless you'd rather we _do_ take our shopping elsewhere."

"I never said that," the clerk insisted quickly.

Alec hadn't thought so. Herondale equaled money, and that was reflected in the choice the man offered to Jace – or tried to – once he'd measured the required draw. Apparently the concept of adjusting services to the clientele wasn't very well known around here. It was clear to Alec, in any case, that Jace was barely able to see the things laid out on the counter for his inspection.

"What do you think, Alec?" he asked, not even bothering to stretch up and get a better look.

Alec picked up an assembled bow at random and handed it to his friend. "How does this one feel?"

It took some juggling until Jace had found a position in which he could draw the bow without any piece colliding with a wheel or armrest. They should have figured out a shooting posture for him before they'd come, Alec thought.

At least the clerk was sufficiently deermined now that if the Herondale heir wanted to buy a bow, he wasn't going to risk losing his custom.

They went through a number of bows just to determine the type and length of the limbs he found easiest to handle. Alec started to suspect that if Jace had actually been serious about taking up archery for good, he'd be back in the store in a few weeks, once he'd figured out a proper technique.

As it was, he merely handed Jace risers to let him determine which ones felt best in his hand, before they had the store clerk assemble a few bows for him to try on the range.

Jace had never specialized in archery, but he'd been a fair shot once. The man he'd believed to be his father had taken him hunting as a child, but that had been half a lifetime ago for him. He hadn't shot very often since.

Between that and the new posture, Alec found that they were sorely trying the clerk's patience once again when they were out on the small shooting range set up behind the store – accessed only down a set of steep steps. They'd never realized Alicante had that many steps and stairs before, but Alec suspected that they'd be paying attention to them for a long time even after Jace had had his Gale appointment – simply because they were getting so much training in noticing them right now.

He, at least, had chosen his bow quickly, though he had no doubt that the old man selling the goods here would have been more happy if he had gone for a more costly model.

Eventually, Jace had narrowed his choice down to two bows.

"I think this one is going to look splendid on my wall," he said, causing Alec to grin at the clerk's attempt at keeping his own features under control. Apparently the man still wasn't entirely sure just how serious Jace was about that particular use of the bow.

"Good choice," Alec allowed, his expression serious again. "The color fits very nicely with the wallpaper, too."

*

"Alec?" Jace called when he heard his _parabatai_ walk down the corridor outside his bedroom. They were alone in the house, while Clary and Izzy had gone out again, to stock up their kitchen supplies and give Clary an opportunity to practice her new language skills.

The door, only leaning in the frame before, was pushed open. "Yeah?"

"Back here," Jace said. "Bathroom."

Alec appeared in the doorway a moment later.

Jace looked back at him from where he'd been inspecting the bathtub. He really craved the experience of submerging himself in hot water and just soaking in peace, with a good book, but no matter how he turned it, the tub defeated him.

He was reasonably sure he could have gotten out of the chair and onto the rim as a first step. He might even have managed to somehow lift his feet into the tub, though with the rim as narrow as it was, it would have been a very precarious maneuver. Lowering himself into the tub would have been inconvenient but certainly doable.

Getting back out when every part involved – that was he and the tub – was wet and slippery was out of the question.

"What did you need?" Alec asked.

Jace gave him a lopsided grin. "Would it cause you to blush very badly if I asked you to help me into that tub and back out of it later?"

He saw the faintest darkening of his friend's cheeks at the suggestion.

"I think I'll live," Alec decided after a second.

"I never doubted that," Jace laughed. "Just give me a little time to get ready."

"Sure. Call for me whenever you're done."

Jace thought he was getting better at remembering to put everything he was going to need in the near future within reach before he started doing anything inconvenient such as undressing himself.

He was glad to find that he could reach the tap with some effort, which at least let him run his own bath. If he was a bit careless adding the bubble bath to the water, he figured it was no more than he deserved to make up for all this time spent with only showers and quick washes by the sink before that – with the exception of that one, thoroughly unenjoyable bath. He resolved to wash and soak that one from his mind today.

With a moment of surprise, he realized that 'all this time' had been barely two weeks. It felt like a lifetime already.

He dropped a change of fresh clothes on their bed – he was sure there was _some_ way to put on pants while sitting up, but he hadn't found it yet – and put a book and towel within reach before hanging a second towel over the backrest of his chair. That one could go on the seat before he came out of the tub later. He was just working on stripping down to his skin when he had to pause to turn off the water. Flooding the bathroom floor wasn't high on his wish list right now.

Alec appeared within seconds after being called. He couldn't have moved far in anticipation of being required any moment.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked Jace, who found that he greatly welcomed the fact that his friends made a point of never assuming, the way Phillip Silverrose had during the short time he'd been supposed to assist him.

"I think it'd be the safest if you just picked me up and put me in the tub," he told his _parabatai_. "Anything else is going to be … wobbly at best."

"Okay," Alec acknowledged, slipping out of his shirt to avoid soaking his own sleeves before he moved to lift Jace from where he was sitting. His eyes stayed carefully in the vicinity of Jace's face, as if he was afraid of causing discomfort if he looked anywhere else.

While claiming he didn't mind in the least would have been a lie, Jace found that his priorities had changed slightly for the time being.

One arm hooked around Alec's neck to help maintain a better balance, he gave his friend a small grin. "Can you please look at what you're doing?" he asked as Alec took one step forward to get close enough to the tub. "I'd rather you didn't end up slamming me into anything."

"Don't worry," Alec told him. His face barely changed color at all. "I've thought this through. You're safe with me."

"Never doubted that," Jace muttered, the last word turning into a pleased sigh as he was lowered into the water.

Closing his eyes, he leaned back to enjoy the heat around his body.

"Alec?" he said when he heard the first hint of retreating steps.

The sounds stopped "Yes?"

"Can you check on me now and then? I'm told my body may have trouble regulating heat for a while. From what I've _read_ , it shouldn't be an issue because my injury was pretty low, but… just to be safe? This is a very hot bath." He wanted to enjoy this bath, not worry about passing out from overheating.

"Will do," Alec promised immediately. "And speaking of heat – do you want me to bring you a cup of coffee to go with your bath and your book?"

Jace opened an eye to look up at Alec. "Would you? Have I told you recently that you're the best _parabatai_ I've ever had?"

Alec chuckled. "Not in so many words," he said. "I'll get you that coffee."

*

_November 26 th, 2016_

"What do you think?"

Clary stood aside to give everyone a good view of the finished painting.

By general agreement, she had converted Jace's old bedroom into a studio for herself, which allowed her to spread the supplies she'd brought and the things she'd taken from her mother's old house just as she liked.

The room's two windows were facing west, but she took care of any issues with lighting by putting a sunlight charm on the walls where she needed the light to come from.

"That's Ragnor Fell's cottage in England," Jace observed as he studied the painting.

She nodded. In any case, it was what his home had looked like from the outside. "I thought it was probably best to pick something people wouldn't wonder too much about seeing in Magnus' home. Everyone knows the two were close."

She'd considered actually copying one of the large-format paintings that had been _in_ Ragnor's home, as far as she could from memory, but eventually decided against it. She didn't have the experience to judge how much a second, too-similar painting existing would throw her navigation off. She also didn't know if the boost that came from using her own paintings only required that she had been the one wielding the brush. It was entirely possible that the image had to originate in her mind.

Since this wasn't the time for experimentation, she'd played it as safe as she thought she could.

"I think it looks gorgeous," Izzy said. She had come over to peer at the colors close-up.

"I think Magnus will love it," Alec added.

"You think you will love having a way to see Magnus instead of falling asleep on the phone with him every night," Jace teased.

The happy light shining in Alec's eyes would have been confirmation enough, but Alec laughed at the words and nodded. "That, too."

"Right." Clary looked up from her phone. "We'll have Charlie over for dinner and she'll deliver the painting to Magnus. That'll give us enough time to test-drive it."

"But it'll be too early to break into the library." Alec's voice held a note of disappointment.

Unfortunately, even Charlie, being the itinerant musician that she was, had commitments. Right now, she was recording a studio album with a band that had inconveniently found itself a guitar player short, which limited the hours she could spend helping them out.

The time difference didn't make it any easier.

Just as unfortunately, they still hadn't found a way for Clary to listen outside of the paintings she was leaving. Blind jumps weren't an issue when they exited at the Lightwood or Fairchild houses, but hopping into the classified rooms at the library, even at night, didn't seem wise.

They hadn't heard anything about their second visit there being noticed, but that didn't necessarily mean that it hadn't. The last thing they wanted to do was to step out of a painting and into the arms of waiting guards.

So they waited. At least it stood to reason to assume that no one was going to remove the Nightshade court files from the already-concealed archive.

*

"Ragnor always had a fondness for hiding inside paintings that I've never been able to quite understand," Magnus said as he put a hand on Clary's shoulder.

She reached back and grasped his wrist instead. "You need to actually touch skin. I'm not Charlie."

"Yet," Magnus said.

"I'll never be Charlie," Clary insisted. "Not even the way you meant it. Paintings are a lot more restrictive than music is. A lot less portable, for one."

Charlie, standing aside with her guitar, laughed. "I found that painting quite portable."

"Yeah," Clary said. "But now it's here, and here only. We can't take it with us when we go in, and to come out elsewhere I'll need another painting. Alright. Here we go."

Magnus followed Clary's tug, moving along with her as if he let himself be guided in a dance.

He felt the breach through the dimensions as if he was sliding through a tunnel that shaped itself to his body like an elastic sleeve. It wasn't anything like portaling. The portal was like a vortex, spinning and tearing at anything that went through it, forces pulling every which way and threatening to whisk a traveler away who wouldn't keep their mind on the destination.

Traveling into the Wood with Charlie felt like being pressed through the teeth of a comb if she went through sounds. When she used a plant-based entrance, it was as simple as stepping into a meadow.

Once inside, the Wood was the same it always was: ever shifting, ever changing.

Portaling out of it probably would have worked – though portaling into Idris would still have set off every single ward they'd recently put up to prevent just that in addition to the ever-standing ban of portaling directly into Alicante – but portaling into the Wood had to be impossible. There was no one location to fix in one's mind as an exit, since it seemed that every spot of the infinite forest changed as soon as it was left behind. Even retracing one's steps precisely wouldn't take a person past the same trees again.

Clary's face was crinkled up in a frown born of deep concentration.

"Dammit," she muttered. "I have two exit paintings in Alicante, and they're too close together that I can properly tell them apart from here. If I pick the wrong one, we'll end up wherever Imogen put the painting we used to bring Jace home."

Magnus wasn't sure he wanted to take an unexpected detour through the Inquisitor's home. He'd be just as happy if he never had to catch a glimpse of Imogen Herondale ever again. She'd taken so much pleasure in torturing him that time when he'd been caught in Valentine's body…

Granted, she'd taken him to _be_ Valentine, but it was still hard to forget.

Scratch that. It was impossible to forget.

"Unique features," Charlie advised. She had stepped in at their heels, carrying herself because until a moment ago, they hadn't known if Magnus' magic was going to weigh him down and make it harder for Clary to get through in the first place. "Think. What sets them apart?"

It took another minute before Clary's face lit up. "The one in Imogen's house has charms on it because I had to quick-dry the paint. Got it. Let's go."

With a tug on Magnus' wrist, she stepped forward again.

Once again he followed, fitting himself to the motion she created, and landing lightly on the hardwood floor of what had clearly once been a teenager's bedroom but had now been converted into an art studio.

"Note to self," Clary muttered, turning by 180 degrees to frown at the large painting they had just stepped out of. "Vary motives. Landscapes may be a nice touch for entering the Wood, but long-distance travel would be that much easier if they had more distinctive colors."

Magnus chuckled. "Change the season," he advised. "Make it fall or winter, and you can have more unique shades."

 


	17. Chapter 17

Magnus looked around as Clary led him downstairs. He could see the shine of power where charms had been placed and masked, and was glad for the knowledge that most shadowhunters lacked the ability to see the mere presence of power.

The other three sat around a set dinner table, waiting only for the empty seats to be filled.

Alec jumped up the moment Magnus appeared in the doorway, and Magnus' heart skipped twice – once at seeing _Alec_ , and once at seeing the joy in Alec's eyes at the sight of _him_ , even though he'd known he was coming.

"Two weeks away from you is too long," Alec determined as they met half-way through the room, sinking into each other's arms and holding on as if they fully intended to never let go of each other again.

Magnus leaned in, inhaling his boyfriend's scent and soaking up the warmth of Alec's body against his.

"This is all very sweet," Jace's voice came from somewhere to their side. "But can you two interrupt the cuddling for long enough so we can eat?" He did sound more amused than annoyed, though, and Magnus felt, as well as heard, the laughter bubbling up in Alec.

"Now at least you know what it's been like for me, watching you and Clary unable to keep your hands off of each other all evening," Alec returned. He kept his arm around Magnus, leading him to the chair closest to his, as if afraid his boyfriend might, for some reason, choose any other place if left to his own devices.

Once seated, they were close enough for their knees to touch.

"You're very sweet," Charlie said, sliding into a chair of her own. "But I do need to leave again in about…" she checked her phone, "half an hour. So if Clary doesn’t feel confident that she can return you on her own later, or tomorrow morning, you need to leave with me."

"No," Clary hurried to assure them before Alec or Magnus had any time to look sad. "I can find Magnus' loft, and I can find back. Magnus can stay the night."

"It'll mess up my sleep cycle horrendously," Magnus said, the light in his eyes suggesting just exactly how much he didn't mind.

"And mine," Alec added, grinning. "Who cares?"

*

"Now," Magnus said when they were done clearing the table. "We do have a lot of catching up to do, and I would absolutely love to start on the catching up right away but – wasn't there something about your bow that we needed to take care of?"

"There was." Alec found himself a little nervous at the prospect. In a perfect world, scrying on the manipulated bow would give them an image of whoever had done it, which would lead them to good, hard evidence of what had happened.

The world was rarely perfect, however, and in the worst case, they would get exactly nothing from the bow. That wouldn't just leave them in the same place they were in now where clearing Alec was concerned – it would be worse.

So far, they had absolutely no ideas on how else to proceed, considering that any evidence that might exist would be on the surveillance cameras of the New York Institute, and anyone who allowed himself to be recorded while messing with someone else's gear would have to be a complete idiot.

Of course they were all so used to the cameras that the faintest chance remained that they had simply forgotten about them. That particular thread was so thin that Alec really didn't want to cling to it.

He collected his disassembled bow, carefully wrapped and stashed away, from his room and joined the others in the living room, where he placed the bundle on the table.

"You're the ones who know the Institute and the people there." Magnus slowly folded back the wrappings. "It'd probably be best if you shared in the experience. See what I see."

"How do we do that?" Jace asked, leaning forward with his forearms on the table.

"That rune you have to share memories? We'll use that as a charm, and all you'll have to do is sit around me and touch me while I work. That way, I won't have to keep up two spells at the same time." He looked at Alec. "It's your bow. It's tuned to you. Do I have your permission to tap into your energy a little for this? It may be more… forthcoming then."

"You can take as much as you need," Alec said.

Jace tapped the sofa by his side. "You're faster on your feet than I am, so if we're supposed to be close enough to you to touch, I think you should come over here," he suggested.

Doing as asked, Magnus laid the pieces of the bow on the table, arranged as they would have been if the weapon had been assembled – with the riser in the middle and the two limbs on either side.

"Do you know which piece has been tampered with?" he asked Alec, who squeezed himself between the sofa's armrest and Magnus.

Alec pointed. "That one I'm pretty sure about. Not sure the others weren't."

Magnus slid out of the sweater jacket he wore to bare more skin for the Nephilim to touch to establish contact.

Jace rested his hand lightly on Magnus' arm, the touch calculated to avoid impairing any of the warlock's movements. Clary placed her hand just below his.

Izzy moved to stand behind Magnus, which was the only place she could put herself in where she wouldn't have to engage in any kind of distortion to establish skin contact with him.

Twining the fingers of his hand through Magnus' left, Alec studied the disassembled bow. He was having second thoughts about his recent purchase right now. If this bow rendered anything useful, they'd have to keep it as it was, just in case it was needed by whoever would investigate the case. There was no telling when he'd be getting it back – and in what kind of condition. Then he remembered something else.

"I'm sorry, Magnus," he said in a low voice. "About the bow."

Magnus turned to him, his eyebrows raised slightly.

"It _is_ yours, strictly speaking." Magnus had once demanded it in payment for defending Izzy in a trial – with Inquisitor Herondale, of all people, presiding. He had told Alec to keep it and think of him when he shot his arrows.

Magnus leaned sideways, fondly resting his head against Alec's shoulder for a moment. "Don't worry about the bow. We have more important things to worry about than an artifact, pretty as it is."

Sparkles of blue and purple light gathered around Magnus' free hand, magic collecting as the warlock began his spell.

His fingers were moving above the bow's limb, the pattern complex with often only a hair's breath between his skin and the smooth material, but without ever fully touching.

Alec could see the magic settle on the bow, spreading to cover every bit of the surface and sinking into the material until it was permeated by a soft glow.

Once it was saturated with power, Magnus dropped his hand, closing his fingers tightly around the middle of the limb and shutting his eyes.

The double vision of the images received from the object and the world he saw with his physical eyes was confusing, and Alec let his own lids drop after a second as well.

Now he could see clearly, or as clearly as it was possible to see with scenes playing out in rapid succession and moving backwards.

He caught glimpses of himself while Magnus rewound, and soon he could feel a steady trickle of energy seeping out of his fingers and into Magnus, mixing in with the flow that passed between his boyfriend and the weapon.

They were back in the hive chamber now, and Alec squeezed his eyes shut against the images he didn't want to re-live, realizing only when the effort caused spots of light to appear in his vision that he wasn't going to be able to shut out the magical sight that way.

He forced himself to relax, and returned his focus to the images sent by Magnus just in time as the rush slowed, and stopped, and reversed direction.

He could see the weapons' room now. The magic wasn't showing him what the bow had seen – of course not. A bow had no eyes to see. It was merely giving them a glimpse of the moments the bow had been _in_ , using the artifact as an anchor for the location to be disclosed at any given moment.

The doors opened, and a man entered, his face a mask of smug satisfaction. He was whistling softly to himself.

For a few moments, he stood inside the room, apparently waiting for something, until his phone buzzed, and he glanced at the screen.

His smile morphed into a grin as he put away the device and moved immediately, directly, to the locker that held Alec's bow.

It opened at a touch, the lock apparently disengaged from elsewhere.

The bow came off its holder and out, to be placed on the closest flat surface. The man didn't seem concerned about anyone catching him at this. There could only be one explanation for that: He had to have an accomplice somewhere.

That was: at least one. Someone who had texted him to give him the all-clear, and who was probably keeping watch - but potentially also someone else who had disabled the locks.

The man brought out a set of small tools, twisting the material of Alec's bow ever so slightly while taking every care not to leave any visible marks. He repeated his procedure another few times for good measure.

Once he had wiped down every inch of the bow with a piece of shiny, smooth material, he returned it to its rightful place, carried in a fold of that same cloth to prevent skin contact.

He was tapping out a message on his phone, his expression now downright gleeful, when Magnus opened his fingers and the flow of images stopped.

"He knew silk isolates magic," Magnus noted as he folded the wrappings Alec had used to avoid diluting any 'memory' the bow might be carrying even more than he already had. "But it wasn't quite enough. Do you know him?"

"Adrian," four voices replied as one. "Hawkfeather," three of them continued.

"One of Aldertree's golden boys," Alec added alone. "He'll be under his protection. We'll need more to go by than 'we did some scrying by warlock and this is what we saw', but we have a place to start."

Magnus shifted to look at Alec. "You should try to get him to confess," he said. "If it comes from his own mouth, it'll be hardest to refute."

"We'll have to get access to him first." Alec was thinking hard. "I don't think the cameras will be worth much – he's connected to Aldertree and we know Aldertree is involved up to his eyebrows in whatever mess is going on. We should still try. But we can't just jump into the Institute and grab Adrian to demand an explanation. And if we could, he'd just deny it, so we'll need a bit more of a plan."

Magnus' smile was downright predatory. "Maybe this will help," he said, snapping his fingers next to his temple.

When the flash of light was gone, he was holding a photograph, slightly larger than the ones he usually produced that way. It was a prefect rendition of the moment Hawkfeather had opened the locker.

Another flash, and Magnus placed an image of Hawkfeather with the bow in his hands on top of the first.

The third produced him at the table, the fourth applying his tools to the bow and the last showed him with the bow held in a square of silk.

"Present him with the evidence, and you may just catch him by surprise, before he has time to wonder how you came by these."

*

_November 27 th, 2016_

Izzy's patience in giving Clary riding lessons was starting to pay off. She watched her charge trot Brownie around the ring with some satisfaction as she contemplated her progress.

"Across the long diagonal," Izzy called out. "You should come right past me. Keep your eyes where you're trying to go. Remember you're changing hands."

Clary turned Brownie off the full-school path she'd been on before, aiming as ordered. She remained a little timid on the pony, always concerned of any over-reactions should she give an aid too forcefully, but clearly improving her performance with every lesson they had.

As she went down the length of the rectangle again, she allowed herself a glance sideways, where Alec and Jace had appropriated a paddock for their own training.

"Do you want to join them over there?" Izzy asked. "If not, keep your eyes where you're going. Brownie won't go over the fence with you, but another horse might, if you keep telling it you'd rather be there than here."

"I'll never understand how Jace can make Crusader do all those things," Clary said as she turned her attention back to her own lesson. "Alec, too, but Jace has only weight and rein to ride with, and he's _fencing_ from the saddle."

That was what the two young men were doing right now: They had practice blades out and were going at each other with them. They weren't even doing so at half-speed, as Izzy knew perfectly well, but apparently it was enough to leave Clary deeply impressed.

"He has a very good horse," Izzy allowed. "No matter what else, Valentine made sure the boy he raised only had the best that money could buy."

She sighed a moment later, when Clary's focus wavered again. They weren't going to get much done while the other two were playing around within sight. For a moment, she considered asking them to take themselves and their horses and fencing game elsewhere. Then she reconsidered. Maybe it was time to give Clary a break from formal riding lessons and just let her enjoy being in the saddle for once.

"Down the centerline and stop in the middle," she told Clary as she crossed to the fence. "Alec! Jace! Are you very busy over there?"

"Depends on why you're asking, Iz," Alec told her. He disengaged and turned Thunder to face his sister.

"I thought maybe I could throw a saddle on Demonsbane and we could go for a ride – all four together," she suggested. "It'd be a nice change."

"A ride? Like – outside?" Clary's voice had acquired a slight squeak. "With no fences to stop Brownie from taking off with me?"

"Brownie hasn't ever taken off with any rider." It must have been at least the hundredth time Izzy had told her that. "But I can take a lead rein, and if you're not comfortable on your own, I'll put her on it."

That seemed to be enough reassurance for Clary to at least consider it less than a potentially fatal exercise, and nod.

Jace sheathed his sword. "I love the idea," he declared. "And if there's anything outside of Alicante that's not Lake Lyn and that you'd like to see, we can show you."

Clary didn't even have to think about that. "Can you show me where you grew up?"

He made a face. "Yeah, sure. Not so sure that there'll be much to see. You see, the manor is warded against being found by anyone who doesn't already know where it is and is recognized by the wards as having a right to be there, so no one's _been_ there since Valentine faked his death and I was sent to live with the Lightwoods. I don't expect it will have kept up too well all on its own."

"I'd still like to see," Clary said.

"Actually, I'd like to see, too," Alec admitted.

"Alright." Jace let Crusader walk towards the gate to their paddock. "I'll need a moment. You might want to grab a snack for us – we'll be out a few hours. It's not exactly around the corner."

*

"So you're like the Secret Keeper of Wayland Manor?" Clary asked Jace. They had left the main street leading away from Alicante and turned down a lesser path, with Brownie moving at a brisk walk while the larger horses had settled into the slow, even jog that their riders insisted on being the best travelling gait. At least the pony had no issue keeping up with them so far.

Clary couldn't deny that her friends looked absolutely beautiful on their horses: Alec on the piebald Thunder, who reacted to him just as precisely and quickly as Crusader did to Jace, and Izzy on her horse Demonsbane, whose glossy coat was so dark a brown that it almost looked black when the light didn't hit just right.

She was sure that she made for a far less impressive figure on her pony, but she really didn't care. Either of those three horses probably would have dumped her at the first opportunity.

Still, she fixed the images of all three in her mind. She was going to have to put them into a painting, separately or together. Or both.

"That's probably accurate," Jace admitted. "Or as accurate as it gets."

"Too bad you don't gallop yet, Clary," Alec said. He pointed ahead at the top of the rise they were nearing. "We used to ride races on the stretch behind this hill. It's the best place for that on this side of Alicante."

Clary's hands tightened on the reins, as if she wanted to make sure Brownie knew she wasn't going to be up for racing. She had cantered her in the ring before, but that had been far from a full-out gallop, as Izzy had told her. "You go ahead and race if you like," she told them. "I'll take it nice and slow."

The corner of Jace's mouth gave an upwards twitch. "Iz? Do you mind?"

Isabelle shook her head. "I'll stick with Clary, but be my guest. My bet's on Alec, though. Thunder's always been the faster horse on short distances."

"What do you say, Alec?" Jace asked, turning to his _parabatai_. "Race ya?"

"Oh yeah," Alec returned. "Same as usual?"

"Same as usual," Jace confirmed, and the two men let their horses fall into step side by side, noses kept at the same level.

As soon as they crested the hill, Thunder broke into a gallop as Alec leaned into the motion, folding himself close over the horse's neck. Crusader sped up her steps, but was quickly left behind. The golden horse hadn't even changed gaits.

It didn’t take long for Alec to notice that Jace wasn't anywhere near him, and he slowed his horse and swerved to look back for his competitor.

"What's wrong?" he asked as he approached them again at a quick trot.

"Crusader didn't get the memo that it was racing time, that's wrong," Jace said, a hint of frustration in his voice. "Seems I need a corner to get her out of a trot."

"A corner?" Clary asked.

Jace turned to look at her. "You know how Izzy always has you switch to a canter in a corner of the ring? That's the easiest way to do it. Your horse is already bent right, and even if your aids aren't entirely clean, they usually know that speeding up in the corner equals a canter. Out here? She gets that I'm saying "speed up", but my feet still tell her "trot". So that's what she does."

He thought about that for a while. "Okay. Let's try this again."

They were all riding with only one hand on the reins – you always wanted to have one hand free if you were outside of the ring, they had told her. Now, Jace placed his free hand flat against his thigh, pushing back on the leg and keeping it there.

The next second, he and Crusader were flying down the path, Alec in hot pursuit.

"How can anyone be that _happy_ about going down a hill so fast?" Clary asked Izzy, commenting on the gleeful sounds drifting back to them.

Her friend laughed. "I bet it won't take long before you'll be just as happy to join them," she said. "Though we better get you a faster horse before that, or you'll forever be lagging behind. Not today, though. Today, you just enjoy your ride at any speed that feels good to you."

They could see Alec and Jace rein in their horses up ahead, where the ground was rising again and the open meadows on either side of the path were giving way to the edge of a forest.

"Is that part of Brocelind Forest?" Clary asked, pointing.

"Nah. That's just a grove," Izzy told her. "We're too far west to even catch the outskirts of Brocelind Forest here."

Clary tried to picture in her mind where they had to be. They had been over maps of Idris in the last few days, but putting her location at any relationship with what the maps she had memorized showed was hard. "Do you think we could convince our phones to give out GPS instructions for Idris?"

"That's cheating," Izzy said. "And you'll find riding uphill is more comfortable for both you and Brownie if you lean forward a bit."

Clary wasn't sure she agreed about the cheating, but she had to admit that her teacher was right about the rest. It also caused Brownie to lengthen her strides a little, but as long as her speed remained nice and controlled, Clary didn't mind.

"So who won?" she asked as they caught up with their friends.

Alec shrugged. "No one. We weren't counting because we didn't have a proper starting line."

"There's always a next time," Jace said. His hair was tousled from the wind, and his eyes shone with a light that made Clary wonder exactly how uplifting racing a horse had to feel.

She remembered that time Jace had taken her for a ride on a flying motorcycle. That had been enough to make her feel as if she'd been on a high just from the rush of adrenalin the experience had given her. Was it anything like that? If it was, she most definitely wanted to try it some day.

If it was doable without stirrups and without clamping one's legs against the horse's sides, it should definitely be doable for her. If only she didn't feel quite so wobbly, and if the way to the ground didn't seem quite as far…

There was a smaller path branching off of the one they were on, and Jace turned them onto it with a brief "Shortcut."

Clary would have missed that path altogether. It couldn't have been used a lot, overgrown as it was.

"How many people are living out here?"

"A few," Alec said. "But they're spread out. It's all individual estates, no towns or villages. Wasn't the Fairchild Manor somewhere in this direction, too?"

Jace had a hand on the saddle horn to steady himself as he ducked the low, overhanging branches. "Yeah," he confirmed. "Valentine took me past it now and then. It's a burnt-down ruin no one has touched in eighteen years because they fear it's cursed."

"Is it?" Clary asked.

He shrugged, as far as his posture on the horse allowed. "I've never gone in to check, and I wouldn't recommend you do it either. Cursed or not, the fire was hot and the damage is extensive. What's left of that place is not safe, so don't go in there unless you want to learn what it feels like to crash through a floor and tumble into the basement or to have some pieces of debris rain down on you because something shifted. This is odd."

No one wondered about the non sequitur. Rounding a bend, they had come out into a path that was still narrow, but cleaned up sufficiently to allow comfortable riding again.

Jace straightened carefully until he found his balance, while Izzy pulled up Demonsbane by a tree that sported clear signs of having had branches cut down in the not-too-distant past. She lifted a hand to run her fingers over the cut. "Who uses a seraph blade for cutting wood?"

"Someone who doesn't have a saw at hand?" Alec suggested. "At least we know this wasn't cleared out by any of the local werewolves or vampires, so we're not straying onto anyone's territory." His hand had gone to the bow he carried, but relaxed again now.

"Why didn't whoever clean it up all the way to the crossing?" Clary asked. She once again marveled at Jace's balance. The path had been cleaned up overhead, but not underfoot, and every time Brownie had to raise her hooves high to step over a tree root, she ended up reaching for the saddle horn to keep herself in position.

"They wanted to keep this as their own personal shortcut, and not have everyone else use it, too?" Jace suggested.

"Who knows of this path?" Any number of scenarios spun themselves through her mind, most of them entirely unlikely.

"Probably just about everyone who lives back here," Jace told her. "It's never been used that much. There are stretches where you have to ride single file even with the path cleaned up, and any equipment you're carrying keeps snagging on the greenery on either side – especially in summer, when it's not as bare."

"Sorry," she muttered. "I think I'm getting a bit paranoid here."

"No," Izzy told her almost immediately. "Don't be sorry. Be paranoid. We can't afford not to be right now."

Jace was right, and even the cleared path soon narrowed to where they couldn't ride side by side anymore.

"Okay," Clary said eventually. "I can see why people don't use this path a lot."

"Except someone _is_ using it," Izzy said behind her.

"And preferred to keep both ends of it concealed," Jace added from the other direction. "It's 'heads down and be glad it hasn't rained recently' again."

*

Jace was almost lying on his horse's neck to avoid the low branches. He was balanced just fine in the saddle when riding, no matter the speed, but he'd just found out during their first ride through greenery trying to swipe them off of their horses that he was sitting less stably than he liked once any outside forces were pushing at him.

He felt the tug as something snagged in his hair. The next step turned it from unpleasant to painful, and he tightened his hand on the reins before he lost any hair to the tree. "Whoa, Crusader, wait."

He reached up, trying to disentangle himself, and felt a stickiness he recognized on touch. He'd gotten into a parasitic plant growing in the branches of larger trees and known well for catching onto anything and sticking. They'd all sacrificed hair to them before. He didn't think he'd be able to get free without being able to see what he was doing.

"Alec?" he asked. "Is there enough space for you to come up and help me out?"

There wasn't really, and he felt another unpleasant pull when Thunder came up, pushing Crusader sideways. He needed both hands on the saddle horn when Alec's knee shoved at his leg.

"Sorry," his _parabatai_ muttered. "It's really narrow here."

Jace didn't need to see what Alec was doing to know the other man had brought out a knife to cut through the vines with their cover of thick, brittle hairs that oozed a sticky resin when broken. They'd have to actually get the other end out of his hair later.

"You're free," Alec said. "Keep your head down in case there are any more of these."

"I've already been keeping my head down," Jace returned. "Any farther down and I'd be off the horse. Did it pull any hair out already? Because I'm absolutely for being paranoid right now and not leaving any bits of us behind."

He came up into a more upright position slowly, checking carefully to make sure he wasn't getting into another tangle of those vines.

Alec was cutting through the knot that had got Jace at its base. "Doesn't seem so, but I'm not leaving this here so it can grab everyone else, too."

He caught the plant as it fell, and tossed it between the trees, where it disappeared in the undergrowth.

"There's another one." Jace pointed and continued to scan the branches as far as he could see them.

His friend let Thunder walk forward, passing by Crusader entirely, and stopped to remove the second set of vines as well. He stopped short in the middle of sawing through it. "Someone else hasn't been as careful." He sliced away part of the vine and shifted plant, knife and reins around for a moment to free one hand and pull out a handkerchief. "I realize there are thousands of blond Nephilim, and who knows how many werewolves and vampires in these woods, but I want to know who these belong to. Because you and Izzy are entirely right about being paranoid."

"Which proves that one should be paranoid and not leave any bits behind," Izzy added from the rear of their group. "Now, if you're done cleaning up over there, can we get out of here?"

*

Most of the rest of their ride took them across the plain, following small paths that all but disappeared from time to time.

"How can people live out here?" Clary asked after a while. "I mean, I get the 'no cars in Idris' part, but I can't even imagine a coach like Inquisitor Herondale's on these trails."

"There's a street," Jace informed her. "But it'd cost us an hour or so in either direction because it kind of goes out of its way to connect a number of estates."

They made use of the open space while it lasted, riding side by side, all four mounts going at the comfortable but ground-eating jog now.

After a while, their path brought them back to a road of hard-packed dirt.

Jace pointed as they reached a fork. "The Fairchild estate is down that way."

It wasn't hard to see that barely anyone ever travelled 'that way'.

The path they'd followed so far had been narrow and barely more than a furrow through the dry grass in some areas, but it clearly saw some use. Nature hadn't managed to reclaim it and there even were hoof prints every now and then.

The path leading towards the former Fairchild home hadn't been maintained in a long time, and it was clear in spite of the season that weeds were growing where neither feet nor hooves nor cart wheels were posing any threat to them anymore.

They were all looking out for another fork, and collectively taken by surprise when Crusader was turned at what came close to a ninety-degree angle.

"Jace?" Isabelle asked, frowning. "Where are we going?"

"Actually, we're almost there," Jace told her. "This road is going to take us right past it."

Izzy's frown deepened. "But there's no road there."

Jace twisted around to look back at her. "Trust me, it's here," he assured her. "This is just where the wards start to take effect."

She took her time studying the place where Jace had turned to the left, and Alec was following. Now that she was paying special attention to it, she did think that there was something off about the way the grass was growing along the edge of the road, about how the pattern of the dried and cracked dirt seemed strangely interrupted rather than running out naturally.

Turning Demonsbane and closing her eyes for a moment, trusting to the horse to pick his path, she noticed that she still heard the hoof beat as it sounded on the road, rather than the more muffled sounds on grass. She also still felt the harder impact on every step.

"I hate wards like that," she muttered, which drew a chuckle from the other three.

Following Jace and focusing on what he was doing, the road gradually came into view.

"What do you see when you look back from here?"  Jace asked them after they had ridden for another few minutes.

Isabelle turned, and found herself looking out onto a street equaling the one they had come from in size. To the left of it, there was a fence, once-sturdy but now fallen into disrepair since it hadn't had anyone to take care of it since Valentine had let his impersonation of Michael Wayland die.

"That wasn't there a moment ago," Izzy complained.

"We're inside the estate now," Jace told her.

"Is that the manor?" Clary asked, pointing.

Following her outstretched hand, Izzy spotted something that did look like the tiled roof of a larger building.

Alec was squinting and turning his head back and forth as if he was trying to follow several moving targets at once. "There's so much power on everything here, I can't even tell what's the wards' illusion and what's real," he declared.´

"Just follow me," Jace told them. "I don't know what you're seeing, but the only thing down that way is a small pond. Good for skating in winter. The wards should let up any moment now since I'm leading you. That is, unless they've deteriorated and aren't working right anymore."

"That'd be inconvenient," Alec said, but he let Thunder fall into step next to Crusader, staying back just far enough that his horse's muzzle was about on one level with Jace's knee.

Glancing back once again, Izzy could see that the suggestion of roof was gone from her new perspective, replaced by the crowns of several old trees. The road leading that way had turned into a gravel path, much smaller than what she had seen before and almost entirely grown over.

She turned towards Jace once again, and pulled the reins in her surprise, bringing Demonsbane to a sudden halt.

Apologizing to her horse with a pat of his neck, she stared at the house that had materialized on the other side of the road, set back a little behind a small flagstone yard flanked by two other buildings.

"Stables and mews," Jace said as he pointed to one structure, then the other. "And there's a forge behind the mansion."

"This is huge," Clary breathed. "It looks like it's larger than Herondale Manor."

"It _is_ out in the countryside," Jace pointed out. "Plenty of space. It's also old. It may be one of the oldest shadowhunter residences out here, which means it has far fewer amenities than Herondale Manor has. It's not wired for angelic power and it's not connected to Alicante's water grid or sewers, for one. And it's had a lot of people add to it here and there over the centuries, so everything is skewed and creaks and moans inside." He had stopped Crusader just short of actually entering the yard, frowning as he raised one hand to sketch on his eyelids.

"Jace." Alec's voice came out as a warning hiss. "That stable is in use."

"So's the house," Jace returned, speaking barely above a whisper. "Look at the door."

Looking both ways, Izzy could only conclude that they were both right. There were tracks on the ground in front of the stable door, showing that a horse had been led in or out recently with hooves that weren't entirely clean. The roof showed some sign of a recent patching, too, while the mews sported precisely the condition that could be expected after not seeing a living soul for nine years.

The house showed no direct sign of occupation, but the weeds growing before the front door had been disturbed, clumps of them torn out exactly in the path on which the door would open.

Jace turned Crusader away from his old home. "Let's go," he told the others. "Now."

He set a brisker trot than he had before, glancing back now and then to see how Clary was keeping up.

To Izzy's relief, she seemed to have found Brownie's rhythm well enough by now and sat the faster gait well, without any tell-tale signs of fear showing.

The long ride without formal lessons seemed to have done her good – or maybe she was merely too shaken from their discovery to worry about things like falling off.

They reached the road they'd come from and turned towards the fork leading to the burnt-down Fairchild manor again, where they slowed down to their original pace.

"Who else has access to the wards?" Alec asked when they had settled into a loose formation again.

"That I know of?" Jace returned. "Valentine. There are no surviving Waylands. He didn't let anyone inside the wards while we were living there – we always went out. Unless he did so when I didn't notice."

"Which you don't think is likely," Alec noted.

Jace looked at him. "No. And I don't see anyone just happening to stumble through the wards. They're meant to throw everyone off and keep them from accidentally getting inside of them. You saw how they work."

"Who do you think is using that house then?" Clary asked,

Izzy answered before Jace could. "Someone Valentine knew from his Circle days. Before he stole Jace."

Jace nodded grimly. "Like someone who would call himself Valentine's friend. Brings our Nightshade impersonation to mind, doesn't it?"

"Who happens to be blond, like the hair we retrieved from your shortcut," Alec added.

"Except that that's a glamor and I don’t think torn-out hair would stay glamored. But he might still be blond below the glamor," Jace pointed out. "Which reminds me – does anyone mind taking the long way home? I don't fancy running into _whoever_ on open ground with no cover at all _or_ on that shortcut where there's no way to evade."


	18. Chapter 18

_November 28 th, 2016_

"Have you thought about whether we should tell anyone about the Wayland house?" Alec asked.

Like every morning, he and Jace used the time that Izzy and Clary spent running in the Lightwoods' gym with a workout of their own.

They were both sitting on mats on the floor, with Jace running through a series of increasingly difficult stretches, while Alec stayed at hand to lean down on his legs at need to keep his knees extended.

It had been some relief when what information they had found had suggested that given Jace's training status, he had a longer than average time window before he'd have to seriously worry about atrophying muscles. What they hadn't found any data on was whether that, as a consequence, increased or reduced his risk of joints stiffening up or losing range of motion.

Not wanting to run more of a risk than he had to either way, he had gone digging for exercises and put together a training plan for himself. It may have been a little more rigorous than most people would have preferred, but Jace wasn't most people, and he liked his exercise when it left him drenched in sweat and feeling every muscle he had worked.

He had even found that there was a muscle in his side that he had some very limited control over, which could be improved slightly by drawing a strengthening charm on top of it. It wasn't much, but he took what he got.

"The only person we could sensibly tell is Imogen," Jace said. "And I think we don't have enough to go by for that. It's not like we actually _saw_ anyone. But she'll probably take it as more proof that I shouldn't be living here. Greater safety and all."

"She may have a point," Alec said, but the gleam in his eyes suggested exactly how serious he was about it.

"What?" Jace returned, matching his friend's expression. "You think I need protection and greater safety? I'll show you how much protection I need!"

 "Oh no," Alec laughed. "We're not there yet."

Their morning exercise always ended with a round of hand-to-hand combat, or what passed as that for Jace at the moment. For the most part, it involved both of them on the ground, wrestling for control.

He didn't stand a chance against Alec at this point, but he was starting to get some idea of how to keep a potential attacker at bay for long enough so one of the others could come and rescue him – or, with a lot of luck, to get on top of him and stab him or knock him unconscious.

They'd found out with some surprise that the lack of muscle tension in most of Jace's lower half could actually also serve to hinder someone trying to use his opponent's momentum or motions against him.

They fell silent as Jace strained to hold his position and count slowly.

"Definitely no telling Imogen before we've tracked our treasure from yesterday," he said the moment he came up with a relieved breath. "Okay. Weights?"

That was the easiest part of their morning workout, as far as he was concerned, and would be followed by a segment of challenging his unenhanced balance as far as it would go.

"We can try again when we're done here," Alec agreed.

They had started an attempt at tracking the thin strand of torn-out hair between them after they had returned the day before, and not gotten any kind of signal at all. Whoever they belonged to was either too far away, or concealed behind heavy wards.

Possibly wards like the ones on the Wayland manor.

 

_November 29 th, 2016_

"I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to make the time." Charlie had joined them in the living room after an unsuccessful expedition back into the library. "Maybe if we'd managed to do this sooner…"

"Nonsense," Alec told her firmly.  "We don't even know if the file was still there the first time we went in there."

They'd gone to check out the Nightshade court file, only to find that the file was absent.

"It may just as well be lying in some office or on the desk of whoever cleaned the database," Izzy added.

It wasn't a huge surprise. Right now, all their leads seemed to be going nowhere: Alec and Aline had finished digging through the shadowhunters who had been put on inactive status after May 2004 and not found anyone who was even a likely candidate. They'd extended their search to a full year, but had little hopes of finding anything that long after the fact.

They'd tried _parabatai_ tracking on the strand of blond hair at different times of the day, but so far without success.

Magnus, too, had tried, both the night before and this one, right after arriving, and again that morning before Clary had taken him back to New York. Warlock tracking was stronger than even the strongest shadowhunter tracking, but it still hadn't yielded any results.

"My bets are on wards," Magnus declared. "That, or he has his anti-tracking rune on all the time."

Searching Valentine's study in the Fairchild house had not given them anything else of interest, and the journal Jace was working on mostly related random funny incidents of early-day Idris, with the odd mention of a mission here and there, or a comment on how they didn't have enough new recruits, while someone wanted to establish a secondary base in another location, effectively splitting their forces.

They hadn't found any mention of Diana's children, and the library suggested that Diana herself may have been a demon trying to exert control over her followers.

Jace had checked out a variety of books on Silent Brothers, which they were going through for information specifically on their extended life spans, but those hadn't yielded any new insights yet. Clary's newfound interest in shadowhunter diseases had not produced any new leads either.

As such, the failure to steal the Nightshade court file seemed to be only fitting their current theme.

"We can always go back to the Wayland place and wait to see who's using it, and if he fits into any of our questions," Alec said after a moment.

"Or she," Izzy pointed out. "We don't know it's a 'he'."

Alec groaned. "Don't we have enough loose ends without adding a new one?" He leaned into Magnus, pretending to need some extra support in light of the suggestion. "But you're right. Just because I don't want this to be anyone else than our Nightshade guy because anyone else would mean we have _more_ people doing strange things, that doesn't make it him."

"If it's a glamor, there could be a woman beneath it, right?" Clary asked. "Glamors don't care about that, do they?"

"They don't", Jace confirmed. "And we have one woman who's apparently gone missing."

They shared a long look.

"The victim," Alec said slowly. "But why would she use _his_ face? And what would be her stake in this?"

Izzy shook her head slowly. "No idea. But she's one of the variables we can't get a hold of right now."

"She may simply have been less badly affected than we've assumed and be out there somewhere, happily doing field duty someplace far away from Alicante," Jace pointed out. "That would explain why no one on the inactive list from that time fits her."

"She may have been too young to ever have _been_ on the active list," Charlie said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, but it brought a look of horror on the Nephilim's faces.

"Who'd go after _children_ like that?" Alec shuddered at the thought.

"Who'd bash in a child's head and leave him to die?" Clary asked, her voice cool. No one doubted she was talking about Max.

"He _was_ on the active list," Izzy pointed out. "He had his rune ceremony and was ready to go into the field."

Charlie made a face. "Right. I still sometimes forget you're all child soldiers."

"Let's put her on the list of suspects just in case," Alec decided. "No matter how unlikely, it's not impossible." He covered a yawn with one hand before making the addition to their notes.

"That sounds like it's time to go to bed," Magnus suggested, leaning in to rest his head against his boyfriend's shoulder.

Alec closed his eyes, deepening the contact by shifting a little in Magnus' direction. "I hate to admit to it, but I fear you're right."

"You know," Jace declared from the other side of the table, amusement in his voice. "You'd be a lot more awake if you actually _slept_ when going to bed."

"Oh, because you and Clary are any better at that?" his _parabatai_ shot back.

Jace laughed. "That's different. I need the exercise."

"I'll help with the clean-up before I'll be on my way," Charlie offered, grinning. "You go on and do your exercises, all four of you."

"Right," Izzy added. "It'd be a shame if any of you lost any skill in that area due to lack of practice."

They did all work together to put the living room in order, until Izzy and Charlie eventually shooed everyone out of the kitchen, claiming that there wasn't enough space for more than two people to do the dishes anyway.

"You know, I don't have to," Charlie said while they worked.

"Help me here?" Izzy asked. "No, but it's very nice that you do."

The corner of Charlie's mouth twitched upwards. "Be on my way and get home," she clarified. "In case you want to get in some exercise of your own."

Izzy had always thought that for a Nephilim, her own attitude towards sex was a rather casual one. The Gales entirely redefined the term "casual" in that respect, however. While not in an established relationship, most of them were habitually trying out each other, going through every other unattached Gale not too closely related and up to seven years younger or older than them. Knowing that they drew some, or even a lot, of their power from it, that even made sense.

Once relationships were established, the rules on exclusiveness were whatever the people involved made them. Charlie specifically was the definition of "not exclusive." To her, sex was a recreational activity on the same level as playing tennis or hockey, but with a lesser risk of injury.

"What about Jack?" 

"I can call Jack if you want him here," Charlie said. "But he'll worry so much about setting the house on fire that we might do better to use the backyard."

That was a joke, at least in part. There had been a time when Jack hadn't dared let go enough to join in, too afraid that he might roast one of his cousins by accident – or even on purpose, if his dragon nature took over.

He'd learned control since, but outside of Ritual, he still limited himself to Charlie. He simply wasn't interested in putting up the effort of staying contained when his counterpart didn't have the power to do a share of the work. Besides that, he had spent so many years waiting for Charlie while apprenticed with a Seelie court, he claimed he still had a lot of catching up to do with her.

"Jack might be just a little too hot for me," Izzy admitted. When they had joined the Gales for Ritual, agreeing to participate in that odd method of generating power in order to destroy a small demon army, she'd been teamed up with Charlie and her cousin Katie, with Jack as the male in their group. Since there were four or five Gale 'girls' to every 'boy', as they tended to refer to themselves, groupings like that were rather the norm for a Gale Ritual.

The power of Gale and Dragon combined certainly made for a unique experience for everyone involved.

"You can call him and make sure it's okay with him," Charlie said.

She really didn't need to do that. Raised by his dragon mother for the first thirteen years of his life, living with the Gales for the next four and then spending twenty years with the Seelie to learn control of his magic before returning to when he had left from by way of time-travel, Jack's attitude towards a lot of things didn't even approach anything anyone Izzy knew would consider normal.

That was, anyone other than the Gales, who seemed to consider everything normal that didn't harm their family or cause enough death and destruction to harm the family as a consequence.

 

_*_

_November 30 th, 2016_

"We need more coffee," Izzy announced as she walked into the kitchen the next morning, where Clary was busy with the coffee maker. "And another cup and plate."

"What for?" the other woman asked, though she was already complying with the request, adding more ground coffee and water to the machine.

Putting breakfast on the table and making coffee had become Jace and Clary's regular task, since they were the ones sleeping closest to the kitchen.

"Charlie spent the night," Alec announced from outside the room.

Izzy turned towards her brother. "Sorry - I didn't think we were that loud."

Alec laughed. "You weren't. We just had to battle her for the shower. This building needs more bathrooms."

"Why didn't you just save water?" Clary asked, her eyes on Isabelle. "If Charlie _spent the night_ , surely that would have been an efficient solution to the bathroom bottleneck."

Her friend rolled her eyes. "Do you have _any_ idea how hard it is to get Charlie to wake up in the morning? Never mind out of bed and into the shower… serves her right if she had to wait until Alec and Magnus were done." She was grinning as she said it.

"Is Charlie going to spend more nights?" Alec asked. "Because if so, we should maybe use our parents' bathroom as a spare to avoid a civil war breaking out over washing opportunities here."

"You'll have to ask her. I'm not the keeper of her schedule or her tour plan." Izzy had taken a plain brown bottle out of the fridge and filled four glasses with honey-colored liquid. "But it looks like no matter her schedule, she'll have to return sometime very soon. We're almost out of auntie-potion."

They found Charlie sitting at the dining table already, her wet hair her natural blonde on one side of her head, while the other side sported a color graduation from the lightest of pinks along the center line of her head, to a fully saturated violet above her ear.

"And wouldn't this be the perfect situation for Robert to walk into?" Jace asked, accepting his potion glass from Izzy. "Imagine what he'd have to say about this."

Izzy didn't bother to suppress a laugh. "Right. Do you figure I've made it to the top of the list of family disappointments again now?"

Alec shook his head seriously. "No way. That position is firmly held by Dad. He has disappointed most of the family by now. Cheers." He raised his potion, and the other three followed suit.

"What does it feel like?" Magnus asked as they put down their glasses.

Alec turned his way. "Being a family disappointment? If by 'family' you mean 'our father', right now that feels amazing."

"No." Magnus gestured towards the now-empty glass. "The potion."

The Nephilim shrugged. "Not like much of anything, actually. But it's definitely unfading us." They had been verifying that with a ClearSight charm. "Clary's pretty solid again already."

"Good," Magnus said, a happy light shining in his eyes. "I can't wait for the day you're telling me that _you_ are looking all solid again, Alexander."

*

_December 1 st, 2016_

Jace had never minded snow before. Actually, he'd always rather liked it.

Just getting to the little archery range they had set up for themselves was enough to tell him that this winter, he was going to hate it.

It wasn't just that he could barely get any purchase in it. His fingers felt frozen already, and he had realized he should have swapped his usual fingerless gloves for full ones – which he probably didn't even have in Alicante.

Soon after, he realized that that wouldn’t help him at all, since the leather that covered his palms was slipping on the wet rims already, making it impossible to give his bare fingers a break from the cold and wet. To add to his difficulties, the rims carried up snow and slush.

Just great: If he had to get through anywhere people had walked before, they'd be carrying dirty slush. His hands would be frozen, wet and dirty. Which was exactly what he needed when he was trying to put arrows into a target. Or, for that matter, in any other situation.

One of his casters caught on something he couldn't see, and he silently cursed the chair's inability to tilt, though he wasn't sure he could have even done that with the rims as slippery as they were.

"Alec!"

His _parabatai_ stopped, looking back at him.

With a jerk of his head, Jace indicated a location somewhere behind him. "I either need your help, or I need to go back inside. In which case I need your help turning around. This thing wasn't made with snow in mind."

Retracing his steps, Alec took position and started to push, while Jace wiped his hands on the inside of his jacket, not even trying to help this time.

"How did you even make it that far?" Alec asked. "This is terrible."

Jace laughed. "Superior strength and technique? Honestly, I have no idea."

"I'll clear a track once it's stopped snowing," Alec promised.

"Unless you plan to clear all of Alicante, I'll still be in trouble whenever we want to go anywhere," Jace pointed out gloomily. "And if anything, the snow's going to get worse. I'll check if there's a trick to it as soon as we get back…"

Who would have ever thought that they'd be using mundane websites as much as they were right now?

One thing they'd done was show Jace the proper posture for archery in his particular situation. It still felt strange, but he was gaining confidence quickly, and his results improved along with it. He'd never give the bow preference over throwing knives, but he couldn't deny the fact that it was easier to carry a quiver full of arrows than it was to carry the same number of knives.

 

_December 2 nd, 2016_

As it turned out, there was no trick to it. At least not one their mundane websites knew.

The next day brought fresh snow again, and Jace elected to stay at home rather than accompany the others to the library. Hopefully, once the snow had stopped falling and been trampled down into a hard cover, it would be easier for him to navigate the streets again.

At least this way, he had some extra time to focus on transcribing the journal.

Determined to use that extra time productively, he settled at the desk and opened the ancient book where he had last stopped working.

Two pages onwards, his eyes fell on a word that caught his attention immediately. There were two more entries between the one he was working on right then and that one, however, and he made himself go through all of those instead of reading ahead, while it grew increasingly hard to keep his attention from slipping.

Skipping couldn't be an option. He needed to know all there was leading up to the section he was waiting for.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of wading through irrelevant words strung into irrelevant sentences, he penned down the date he had kept glancing at.

 _4 th April 1153_, the entry started.

_We are doomed._

Jace swallowed heavily as he put the words down. Much of the rest of the journal was written in the quick hand of someone who was putting words on paper in a calm moment during an otherwise busy day and had no time to waste. That short sentence was printed clearly.

_Today, I have witnessed atrocities beyond imagination. I want to believe that what I saw is merely a symptom of losing my own mind. I want to believe that it was nothing but a dream borne of too much work and too little sleep. But I know it isn't so._

_I followed the screams of distress to help, and I found that I was mistaken in my assumptions. One of them looked up and spotted me where I stood. I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to turn away, unable to close my eyes, watching as they finished their terrible work._

_I thought they would strike me dead right then, for I had seen what no mortal soul surely should ever have witnessed. Now I wish that they had. They have left me alive bearing the burden of knowledge that wasn't mine to gain._

_I must never speak of what I saw. I must never share this knowledge with anyone, lest it bring death and destruction to all of us. I must guard my words, my thoughts. I am afraid to go to sleep, when dreams may return me to that place. I am afraid to witness that scene again. I am more afraid that I might talk in my sleep and doom some poor soul to certain death._

_I cannot even invoke His name anymore. What are we?_

He blinked at the words, double- and triple-checking what he had written.

What are we?

That had been their question since that day they had joined in Ritual and been held by their runes, kept from reaching what their essences had been striving to become.

"Yes, David," he whispered to himself. "What _are_ we?"

Though no names and no details had been given, he felt that suspicion had become certainty. The author of the journal that lay before him had a name.

The next entry wasn't dated. The handwriting had grown worse, the uneven script of someone writing in great distress or under the influence of fatigue, too narrow here, too flat there. Strangely, once he started on copying them out, making out the words was easier than Jace had expected at first glance. It was as if the meaning had been imprinted in the text on a level that went beyond scrawled letters.

_It will not let me die._

_I have never been able to hide my distress from Jonathan. He has always known me too well for that. Our bond has made it impossible beyond that. He will not stop prying. To tell him is to kill him._ _There is only one way to keep him safe._

_I ventured out into the mountains. I am no longer afraid of taking my own life. If the act dooms me to hell eternal, so be it. There can be no hell worse than the one I live in now. I should have used my knife and done it then and there, but I would not subject Jonathan to the knowledge of what I had done._

_It was waiting for me. I do not know why it wants me alive. In some strange way, it seems to feed on my torment._

_If I die, Jonathan dies._

_If I stay alive, I will only delay the inevitable._

_I have heard of people losing faith because they saw too little of the world beyond the earthly._

_How many have ever lost faith because they saw too much?_

"Dammit, David, just spill it," Jace ground out between clenched teeth. He was so close – so close to gaining a step in solving one of their questions. Though David himself didn't seem to have been able to answer the _question_ , he was sure that there was one of the pieces to the puzzle – just outside his reach, because the man had been too wise, too cautious or too shaken to even entrust his secret to the vellum he was writing on.

 _It has given me a way out,_ the next entry started. _It has offered me runes that will keep the people around me safe. They will seal my eyes against seeing what they should not see, and my mouth against speaking what it should not speak. I will be a new kind of Nephilim, to serve them in a way none ever have before._

_I am a coward, for I have accepted._

There was one more line on the page below that.

_It is done._

Jace quickly leaved through the rest of the journal, half-expecting to find empty pages, even though he knew the volume was filled cover to cover.

He made himself copy out and double-check what he had so far before he allowed himself to continue. A glance at the clock told him that he had another hour before he expected the others to return.

Turning the page, he saw that the following entry was dated several years later.

_11 th July 1158_

_The protections are wearing thin._

_When I had Jonathan first inscribe the new runes on my face, sealing my lips and my eyes to the world, when I first felt our bond dissolve and disappear, I thought I would be safe forever._

_I wanted to be safe forever_.

 _The runes allow me to see, but not in the manner mortal men see. They allow me to speak in the heads of mortals, in the same way_ _they_ _do, but I could not speak about_ _that_.

_I have not eaten, drunk or slept since that day. I have not felt the desire of men. I have become closer to them than I am to my own people._

_I am no longer alone. Others have joined me, taking the same runes. With the runes, they have taken the knowledge. I know, because the first to follow me asked me questions today that I did not wish to answer. Yet answer I did, and I understood that I am no longer bound to silence in the way I once was._

_We must remove ourselves further from the Nephilim who once were our brothers and sisters, and limit our contact to keep them safe._

He heard the front door open, followed by the voices of Alec, Izzy and Clary, laughing and joking.

Putting aside his pen, he went to greet them.

"Jace!" Alec called out the moment he spotted him. "What happened?"

"You're white as a ghost," Clary said, losing some color herself. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Jace told them, understanding how David would have felt about being unable to share his secret with his closest friends, and glad that he was not bound by any such restrictions – never mind that he hadn't even gotten to the bottom of the _secret_ yet. "I've decrypted more of the journal and it's… haunting. Get out of those clothes. I'll bring the transcript."

He took a detour through the bathroom, glancing in the mirror Alec had lowered so he could see more than the top of his head in it, and found that he looked as if he had worked through a full night without sleep or runes to keep him energized. Shaking his head at himself, he splashed some cold water into his face and rubbed some color back into it by vicious toweling before delivering the pages he had copied out cleanly, along with his draft of the last entry.

They passed them from hand to hand, reading silently.

"I knew it!" Izzy breathed when she was only partly through the first section. "We've been reading the journal of David the Silent all along."

"I think we all knew it," Alec said. "But it's a big thing to assume without proof."

"Does he never give a name to the 'it' he's talking about?" Izzy asked.

Jace shook his head. "Not as far as I've read. Either he didn't know it, or he didn't think it was safe to share."

"What I don't understand," Clary noted, returning the last sheet to Jace, "is that this reads as if the Silent Brothers were basically founded by a demon."

They shared a long look, and they knew that they were all thinking the same thing before Alec put it into words:

"No. I think his 'it' was an angel."


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the Martin-indulgent thank-you chapter, as promised in return for his tireless advice re. Jace's situation. One again - thank you, and enjoy your cameo.

_December 3 rd, 2016_

Leaving the house still was more trouble than it was worth, most of the time. With the condition the streets were in, Jace limited his excursions to archery with Alec and riding with everyone – neither of which he wanted to do without. He had volunteered to take extra shifts in the kitchen while he was spending more time at home than anyone else, and used the opportunity to refine his skill at preparing more elaborate meals using only the small area he could reach from his perch on the counter between the stove and the kitchen sink.

The doorbell interrupted them as they were about to sit down to eat.

"My bet's on Lydia," Alec said, rising from the chair he had just sat down on. "She hasn't been over all week."

Jace waved him back down. "I'm getting that."

Backing out of the door rather than bothering with a turn, he once again noted how well Charlie's charms on the door frames worked. They cleared his knuckles by barely more than a hair's breadth, but it was enough to prevent damage to either wood or fingers.

It wasn't Lydia.

Once again, Inquisitor Herondale stood in the door frame, looking Jace up and down – mostly down, he thought – with a scrutinizing gaze. He was suddenly glad that he had taken off his hoodie before starting to cook – cooking was hot work, and sleeves wet from getting them into the dishwater wasn't any fun either. The close-fitting black t-shirt he wore nicely showed off the definition of his upper body and arms. Not even Inquisitor Herondale should be able to call him helpless with that in front of her eyes.

"Jace," she said after a moment. "You're looking good."

"I feel good," he allowed. "I'm home. With my friends. My family. I'm happy here. I'm not leaving."

Imogen sighed. "I wasn't going to ask you to." When Jace only looked at her expectantly, she added: "May I come in?"

He cleared enough space for her to do so. "We were about to have lunch."

"I can come back another time if it's more convenient."

There wasn't going to be any convenient time for Imogen Herondale to drop by anywhere in the foreseeable future, Jace thought.

Clary saved him the need to answer by appearing in the door to the dining room. "Have you eaten, Imogen? Would you like to join us?"

"That's very kind, Clary," Imogen said, before turning back to Jace. "Do you mind?"

That was more consideration than she had shown for his wishes at any time before now, and he made himself back up further to let her approach. "Your coach is going to freeze outside, though. We have no stables."

To their surprise, she smiled at that. "I walked."

"I'll get you a plate." He turned into the kitchen at an angle far more accurate than he usually bothered with in the charmed house. He didn't leave her any time to protest that Clary should do that, or even that she could get it for herself.

When he returned, a glass and cutlery balanced on a plate in his lap, Clary had already sat Imogen at the table between Izzy and herself, which put her roughly facing Jace.

"So are we to believe that this is a purely social call?" Jace asked when they had all settled with food on their plates.

"No," Imogen admitted without trying to talk herself out of it. "I've come with a purpose." Taking a bite, her face registered surprise, then delight. "My compliments to the cook. This is delicious."

"Thank you," Jace said in the driest tone he could muster. He would have loved to feed his grandmother a piece of Gale pie for dessert, but if it had a reaction to her – or she to it – they were going to be in trouble.

Imogen's eyes widened slightly. "You cook?"

Jace rolled his eyes. "Shouldn't be that amazing that a man who can't walk cooks. Cooking is mostly done using the hands."

She visibly winced under his words. "That's not what I meant."

He relented, though his tone barely warmed. "We all cook. We take turns. Other than Izzy, because she doesn't cook." He wasn't going to go into the fact that they weren't exactly taking turns right now, or why.

"Because she doesn't cook anything edible," Izzy corrected him, grinning. "I'm a complete disaster in the kitchen."

"Maryse raised you with more skills than I have," Imogen noted.

Jace gave a mirthless laugh. "That's because we didn't have servants to do everything for us. Was the purpose of your visit making sure that we don't starve?"

"No." She took a breath. "Jace, you remember that the medics said you could borrow that wheelchair… _borrow_ being the operative word."

Tensing suddenly, Jace barely resisted the urge to clamp his hands to his wheels. "They want it back?" he asked. "I still need it. They said I could keep it until I got one of my own." It was a shitty piece of metal, maneuvering badly, impossible to get up or down obstacles and entirely useless on anything but straight, good ground, but right now, the chair was his freedom to move around, to leave the house, to not be carried everywhere.

Not having it meant no archery, no riding, no share in the household tasks, no way for him to get anywhere if he was home alone. He'd have to call for Alec to help him every time he had to use the bathroom…

"They have strongly suggested that it is past time we took care of that," Imogen said. "I… took the freedom to do some research."

The corner of Jace's mouth twitched, but he said nothing. She had probably found something that was even less usable than the one he had now.

"It appears that the mundanes are far more … inventive … in the area of adaptive devices than we are."

"So I have gathered," Jace admitted, hoping even as he spoke that she wasn't going to demand where precisely he had gathered that from.

"Jace, I understand that I cannot keep you from going your own way. Let me at least make it a little safer for you."

How could she still not have gotten the point? He'd have to spell it out for her, again. "Grandmother, I've grown up without servants and I will continue to live without servants. I have no use for a bodyguard either."

Was there a fleeting look of chagrin on her face?

"I meant getting you a wheelchair that's better adapted to your lifestyle. I've checked with some mundane stores and found one that seems to have the time and the resources to help you find the right thing." She raised a hand to stop him from answering just yet. "You won't find anything better than what you're using now in Alicante. You may be the first of us who's been injured that badly and desires to stay as active. It'd take forever for you or Clary to get a portal approved. There's no way anyone would currently approve a portal for Isabelle or Alec. I can get one for the day after tomorrow, and that's only because stores are closed on Sundays where we'd be going."

"Who makes the final decision on the purchase?" Jace asked, suspicion in his voice.

"You will," Imogen promised. "I'm just there for the payment. My guards will be there for me, because I have not been in the field for decades and I do have enemies."

So do we, Jace thought, and he wondered if Imogen knew, or at least suspected, more than she let on. He thought about it, aware that everyone was looking at him now. Three weeks until Midwinter. Was it worth spending that much money for three weeks?

But it was three weeks to Midwinter and then an unknown time healing. He'd opted against giving his body those ten days in which it could focus on nothing but repairing the damage. The only time frame they'd been able to give him for that was 'longer than ten days'. Potentially, he was still looking at months of recovery, and he had no idea how much time he would continue to spend off his feet.

Imogen knew nothing of the precise nature of the thoughts that ran though his head, and drew her own conclusions.

"Your friends can come. All of them. No one will oppose me taking Alexander and Isabelle out for a trip. I'm sure you all still have shopping to do for New Year's?"

The Nephilim, removed as they were from mundane religions, had never picked up the custom of giving gifts on Christmas, or any of the other December or January dates that had become established in various regions, based on this legend or that, pushed here or there by attempts at covering up pagan customs or by competing strains of the same religion trying to abolish the others' holidays.

As in the times when their first ancestors had still been mundanes, they greeted the New Year with gifts to each other: well-wishes for the time to come, things they could put to use in the upcoming battles of the next twelve months.

"I can give you spending money if you need any."

Jace laughed. "You can stop haggling, Grandmother. This isn't a bazaar. I accept if they do."

He looked at the other three in turn, and saw with some relief that they nodded.

"I'll have to send someone by to clear you for portaling," Imogen said, hesitantly.

Jace's eyes narrowed. "They portaled me a day after I was wounded."

"Not my idea." Imogen tidily placed her knife and fork on her cleared plate. "Since you haven't been under medical supervision or shown up to any follow-up appointments, they want to make sure there haven't been any new issues."

"Follow-up appointments?" Jace almost blurted out the words. "I didn't even know I had any!" Admittedly, he wasn't sure he would have gone if he had known either.

"That's because you chose to sneak out of my house," Imogen said flatly. "Though I still want to know how you did that."

"That could have been avoided if they'd made them with _me_ , as they should have, rather than with my grandmother, as they apparently did," Jace told her. A note of anger was creeping back into his voice. "Nothing kept them from sending a fire message to me to inform me afterwards either. And who knows – maybe I climbed out the window?"

Imogen studied him for another moment. "I could almost believe that you did," she said. "But the wheelchair surely didn't. As for the other – I did tell them you were no longer living with me. I assumed they'd send you a message."

And they assumed you did, Jace thought. Or chose to assume that. Or expected you told me those things before I left. He wanted to tell her that they could schedule a time with him directly. Realizing that by doing so, he would give them an excuse to delay, he swallowed the words.

"Fine. I'll be home."

"Barring any unexpected outcomes," Imogen said, pushing back her chair and rising, "I'll send a coach round to collect you Monday morning. That is, unless you'd rather walk to the Gard?"

"The coach will be fine," Jace said, hoping it hadn't come too fast. Imogen didn't need to know about his problem with snow any earlier than it became unavoidable. Which it would the moment they arrived at their destination. Which reminded him… "Where are we going?"

"Not far," Imogen said. "We'll portal to the Heidelberg Institute and walk from there."

"Alright. You'll send a message when you have a time for the portal?"

She nodded. This time when she looked at Jace, her eyes caught on the pants he was wearing. Their legs were lined with multiple pockets, many of which clearly held objects. He had found them very helpful in keeping his hands free recently.

"Were they wrong about the risk of injury?"

Ever-honest, Jace shook his head. "No." There was barely a day he didn't find fresh scrapes, faint bruising or marks suggesting he'd had too much pressure applied to the same spot for too long when he undressed. "But that's okay. I use an _iratze_ before I go to bed."

"You know that it's not generally advised to use _iratzes_ that abundantly," Imogen cautioned. "There have been studies that suggest that excessive use—"

Jace cut her off. "The man who raised me would routinely break my bones to drive home his point when I made a mistake in my lessons," he told her coldly, firmly meeting her eyes. "Then _iratze_ it and have me start over. There were times when I had a dozen _iratzes_ a day before I was ten years old. I think I'll be fine with having one in my bedtime routine."

Her mouth opened without producing any sounds. Clearly, she hadn't known that. Few people knew. Maryse and Robert knew because of how surprised he'd been that wasn't the standard method of teaching when he'd first come to live with them. It wasn't that he'd kept it a secret – it had never seemed _relevant_ enough to him to make a big deal of it.

Going by the look on Clary's face, she hadn't known either.

 

_December 4 th, 2016_

True to her advice to be paranoid, Izzy had pointed out almost as soon as the door had fallen shut behind Imogen Herondale that sending them all on a day-long shopping trip abroad was a certain way to get them all out of the house at the same time and be sure they weren't going to return before the appointed time.

Not knowing if they were going to send a medic or a Silent Brother to evaluate Jace's fitness for portaling, they had opted to play things safe and take precautions a day early.

That morning, David's journal, every copy of any document or object they weren't supposed to own, the runes they had copied out from their phone records so far and all the notes they had taken on any of their subjects, as well as the little evidence bag with the strand of thin, blond hair, carefully bundled with a small piece of yarn, had gone with Magnus to New York, where they would remain until after they returned from their trip to Heidelberg.

They left their masked charms on the house, figuring that a sudden disturbance of the disturbance would draw more attention than leaving them in place.

Jace and Clary were leaning over a Latin text together, heads nearly touching as she puzzled out one sentence at a time, when their visitor called.

"Jace?" Alec stuck his head into the room. "For you."

Looking up, Jace saw the hooded figure of a Silent Brother appear behind his _parabatai_. Why did they have to move so utterly noiselessly?

He forced a semblance of a smile on his face. He'd never felt too comfortable around the Silent Brothers, but after their recent discoveries, seeing the man sent a shudder down his spine, all the way to where he lost feeling and beyond it. There was a man who probably had the answers to some of the questions they had, and they couldn't ask him. Even if they weren't sure that he would be unwilling to share his knowledge, they couldn't let him know that they knew he knew.

"Brother Matthew," he said with a nod, "Where do you need me?"

 _It's Brother Matthias_ , the Silent Brother corrected. _Somewhere with a bed on which you can lie down would be good._

"My bedroom, then," Jace said, barely acknowledging the correction of the name. He shifted away from Clary and towards the edge of the sofa, from where one smooth motion brought him into the waiting chair. He didn't even bother with the brakes anymore most of the time.

 _How are you feeling in general?_ Brother Matthias asked as he followed him down the corridor. _Any pain or discomfort?_

"Only when I pull a muscle in training," Jace said. "My shoulders and arms were sore the first few days." He had random, odd and entirely unrelated 'sensations' shoot through his legs now and then, but he understood those to be akin to the phantom pain people who had lost limbs experienced: the brain trying to fill in the sudden void.

Entering his bedroom, he glanced around quickly, suddenly and against all reason afraid they might have forgotten something vital on the desk or elsewhere.

Once satisfied that they hadn't, he pulled off his boots – the only time he still did up his shoelaces was when they went riding – and transferred to the bed. A brief application of logic made him take off his t-shirt before he laid down and rolled over, giving Brother Matthias an unobstructed view of the scar the injury had left.

He could feel the air stir as hands moved above his back, sketching shapes that seemed to somehow allow the man behind him to see what was going on inside his body.

Did Brother Matthias even still qualify as a man?

David hadn't seemed to think so.

Don't draw any runes on me, he silently warned him, glad that all evidence pointed to it that Silent Brothers were merely projecting telepaths, rather than also receiving ones. They could speak in your mind. They couldn't read it. That was what they needed the Soul Sword for.

Brother Matthias expanded his examination, a fact that escaped Jace until his next comment.

_Interesting. There is nearly no stiffness in your joints. I had expected to find some by now._

"That’s because of all the time I spend exercising," Jace said. "I like to be in control of what my body does."

 _Elaborate_ , Brother Matthias told him.

Jace twisted around. The sight of that mutilated face wasn't exactly reassuring, but he preferred it when he could actually look at the person he was talking to.

"We put together an exercise regimen for me. To preserve my range of motion and get as much out of the muscles I can still control as I can." When Brother Matthias didn't protest, he turned all the way and sat up. "I've taken up archery and I ride my horse every day. If you have any more ideas of what I can do to stay fit, let me know."

Brother Matthias looked at Jace, his head cocked slightly sideways.

_What do you hope to achieve by this? No Institute will accept you for field duty as you are._

"So I can't want to stay fit just for my own sake?" Jace asked, a belligerent tone in his voice. "Though there _is_ still the matter of my angel blood. Who's to say that won't end up healing my back after all?"

 _There is nothing to suggest that any such thing is happening._ Did his mental voice sound sad?

Jace shrugged. "I'll give it some more time before I make a decision on that."

It was hard to read in the face of a Silent Brother. In addition to having their mouths and eyes permanently closed or removed, they rarely showed much by way of expression. Now, however, Brother Matthias' face took on a stern one.

_Denial is a river in Africa, Jace. It will get you nowhere._

His lips twitched into a grin. "Actually, if you give me a raft, it'll get me all the way to the ocean."

 

_December 5 th, 2016_

Clary drew the Speak in Tongues charm on a free patch of skin in black text marker. She would add it to her glamor as a proper rune, but having an actual mark on her skin that reminded her of location and precise shape helped in holding it properly in her mind.

Clasping hands with Jace, their marks touching, she let his knowledge of the German language flood into her mind.

It was an amazing feeling. The words and grammar settled, suddenly as familiar to her as her native English. She could spot the similarities and differences to the language of Idris she'd been learning as she examined the new words.

"How long will it last?"

"Long enough for our trip," Jace said. "Probably not much beyond that."

"And then it'll all be gone again?" she asked.

"Not all of it," Izzy had put a foot on the chair in front of her and was sliding a blade into her boot sheath. "With no proper knowledge of the language, you might keep a couple of words permanently. Not enough to make it worth it for learning a language. But if you're taking lessons and you use it in between, you get a good feeling for how the language should sound."

"Are you ready?" Alec asked from the front door. "Imogen's coach is here."

They went to meet it together, reaching the coach just as the driver had climbed off the box.

He greeted them with a touch of his hat.

"Do you need a hand, Sir?" he asked Jace, who shook his head.

"I think we got it covered," he answered. "Alec?"

"Certainly," Alec agreed, moving in to lift his _parabatai_ up into the coach. It didn't take them very long to get settled.

Jace found with some surprise that the motion of the coach barely bothered him anymore. Only two weeks ago, every irregularity in the road had made him feel wobbly.

"Somehow, this makes me feel like a princess in a movie," Clary breathed by his side.

He chuckled, putting an arm around her to draw her close – not because he needed the support, but because that was what princes did, wasn't it? They held their princesses close and protected them against the biting cold of the wind.

Or maybe not, but he liked the image for the moment. "You could paint us like that," he suggested. "And borrow a tiara from Izzy next time we go out in a coach."

*

They emerged from the portal in the Heidelberg Institute and stood aside while Imogen exchanged a few words with the people waiting for them by the portal. 

Jace felt the eyes on him, and he wasn't sure what exactly it was that got him this scrutiny: His status as the Herondale heir, their involvement in the affair with Valentine or the wheelchair he was using. He'd noticed similar looks in Alicante, and when people spoke up, they usually turned out to be about either the first or the third. Nephilim permanently damaged in combat routinely opted for more withdrawn lives.

No one said anything here, and he made a point of meeting the eyes of those he caught staring.

They had done a little research of their own after Imogen had left, and found that Heidelberg, out of all the places that had Institutes, was unique in that its mundanes had elected to develop the odd concept of medical tourism into an art form. It was potentially the only place anywhere where people would find absolutely nothing strange about a slightly weird, rich person coming into a medical supply store with the expectation of speedily finding a replacement for a sub-par wheelchair.

The Heidelberg Institute was located in a side building of the Castle ruin, marked as dangerously in need of restoration and closed to the public.

Thanks to the large numbers of tourists flocking onto and out of the Castle grounds, the streets were clear of snow and their little group set out easily, with Imogen in the lead.

"Do you want to split up?" Imogen asked as they neared their destination. "I was told this may take a while, and there's no point in everyone just standing around…"

They shared a long look. Finally, Alec shrugged. "Why don't you two start on the shopping? I'll stay with Jace."

"Right," Izzy agreed. "Come on, Clary. We can get New Year's presents for those two without them watching. Call us when you're done!"

"Well," Jace said when they had rounded a corner, the brightness in his voice a little forced. "Let's get this started."

*

They had been awaited. An older man wearing glasses approached them, shaking Imogen's hand, then Jace's and Alec's, while ignoring her two guards in the professional manner of someone who had seen people with private bodyguards before.

"I fear the information you gave us on the phone was a little sketchy," the man began once the greetings were completed. He was speaking politely without being submissive, but also clearly gaging her reaction.

Jace caught himself just in time before his expression grew the opposite of polite. He could see why she had scheduled this appointment for him and why she, as the one with control of the money, was the one who had led in the greetings. But if she was going to talk about him in his place when he was standing right here…

She must have felt the piercing look he directed at her, since she shook her head.

"You'll have to discuss that with my grandson. I'm only here for the financial end. Do you have a waiting area for me maybe?"

Jace relaxed, and the man's smile warmed a fraction as he showed Imogen to a corner set up with a number of armchairs and low tables, as well as a generous helping of magazines. Another employee moved in, approaching Imogen as soon as she had settled. "Would you like some coffee or tea while you wait, ma'am?"

They didn't have any opportunity to follow that conversation any farther, since the older man had come over to them and was waving them deeper into the store, where he started asking his questions.

It was probably all the best that his grandmother was waiting off to the side, Jace thought. She might have found it odd that he was reasonably fluent in explaining to a mundane – in mundane terms – about the level of his injury, as well as the details of what muscle function he retained.

"I need something that's good for everyday use," Jace concluded. "We're leaving again soon, so it needs to be from stock." He'd done a little research into what was available, assuming that that was what a mundane coming to that place would do in advance as well. He'd found out that the best wheelchairs were customized to the user, and that delivery times for that were longer than the time he expected to need one to begin with.

Also, for all that money wasn't an issue in the Herondale household, he didn't want to saddle Imogen with that kind of bill for no good reason.

"You understand that there is no way we can find something that fits perfectly that way," the man, whose name tag said 'E. Köhler', cautioned.

"I do." Jace forced a smile. "But we have a flight booked, and then it would take forever before I could get it. And anything's going to be better than this." He slapped a palm against the side of his borrowed wheelchair.

 _Herr_ Köhler gave a chuckle. "True. That is not meant for active use."

"Believe me, I have noticed," Jace muttered.

What followed was a seemingly endless round of measurements, while Jace was shown a selection of designs and colors so he could discard anything he wouldn't even consider trying out.

All in all, he mused, the procedure was somewhat reminiscent of buying a bow – with the exception that the counters in this store were low enough for him to look over, the aisles wide enough to not pull anything to the floor and the staff clearly not wishing him elsewhere. Well, after all, people like he were the main reason this particular shop existed.

Finally, he had a small selection of models lined up to try out. They were, indeed, looking a lot less hospital-like. None of them had anything worth being called an arm rest, and the back rests were so low they were barely worth mentioning. That alone made him feel less like an invalid and more like someone using a practical tool just from sitting in them.

They were also much lighter and easier to move, as Jace found out when he almost landed himself in a display the first time he pushed at the rims.

"Oops," he said, a bit sheepishly. "I didn't expect that."

"No damage done," _Herr_ Köhler hastened to reassure him. "You'll find you have a lot more strength to push that one, too. The one you came in with is much too wide for you."

He hadn't realized that, and from the numbers he'd heard before, it couldn't have been more than a maybe two inches, but he realized quickly that that did count as _much_ in some contexts.

"Do you have a place out back for test-driving?" Jace asked, thinking of the bowyer again.

 _Herr_ Köhler nodded. "Let's just cut it down to the best options and I'll show you. I have a customer back there right now putting the customizations we ordered for him through their paces."

Jace moved to the last of his preselection, an outlier in that it had slightly wider tyres that would give him a somewhat better grip off-road. "What do you think, Alec? Does this throne make me look sufficiently princely for Clary?"

Remembering the morning's conversation in the coach, Alec laughed. "Certainly," he agreed. "Very elegant. Clashes with her hair color, though, and Crusader might try to eat it." Most of the visible parts on that chair were shades of green.

"Crusader's my horse," Jace answered the question in the shop assistant's look.

"And Clary's his fiancée," Alec added, grinning.

Jace carefully executed a few turns. "This one in darkly elegant instead of horse food color would be about perfect," he decided. "So far at least."

*

 "Wow." Jace said as he entered the back room that was set up as a test area. It was a "back" room only in that it was located behind the sales room, which it rivaled in size. It contained a full obstacle course, with curbs, steps, stairs, slopes of varying degree and a variety of different floorings.

A man who looked to be about their own age – or maybe a little younger – was just finishing up, turning sharply and crossing the distance to their little group with two powerful pushes on the rims.

"All good," he told the shop assistant. "You can have the range."

"Thank you, _Herr Müller_ ," _Herr Köhler_ said, while Jace was shaking his head at the setup.

"I have no idea how most of this is even done," he admitted.

The other man studied Jace for a moment. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," Jace said. "I'm new to this."

"You don't look new to this."

Jace realized that without runes, mundanes probably didn't heal from such an injury in the course of a week. Even dressed for the cold, it was hard to miss that Jace didn't look as if he'd just spent weeks or months in a hospital.

"I've been into martial arts and acrobatics since I was little," he said, hoping to salvage the situation. "I feel like I'll go crazy if I can't exercise, so I picked up what I could again as soon as I could move. I've only had an old borrowed hospital wheelchair so far, though. We don't have this kind of equipment back home."

"What did they teach you in therapy?" The other man – _Herr_ Müller – asked.

Jace shook his head, his smile turning wry. "No therapy where we come from. They gave me the chair and sent me home. Very nearly everything I know how to do I figured out on my own."

It seemed to work. The other customer looked at the shop assistant. "I'm not in a hurry. If you don't mind, I'll show him the basics."

"That'd be very kind of you," the older man determined.

A hand was extended towards Jace. "I'm Martin. And that is: only if you want to, of course. If you'd rather continue to figure out things on your own…" It was clear from his tone that he didn't think that would be very wise.

The relief in Jace's laughter was genuine. "Oh no! Show me everything! I'm Jace. This is Alec, my brother."

Martin squinted up at Alec and offered him his hand as well. "Do you get asked often if one of you is adopted?"

"Yeah, I am," Jace answered, just as Alec said: "He is."

Realizing they weren't joking, Martin grew more serious. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Don't worry," Jace assured him.  "Our fathers were best friends, so when mine died, Alec's parents took me in. Best thing that happened to me in my life, so it's all cool."

"Right." With a quick push, Martin tipped his chair back, raising the casters a few inches into the air. He looked very comfortable like that. "Can you do this?"

"Nope," Jace said. "I've seen that but the chair I had had anti-tipping bars that didn't come off… and since it didn't belong to me, I couldn't very well make them come off anyway."

Martin brought his front wheels back down. "Basically, you just reach back and push forward really quickly so the front comes off the ground, then balance out your position," he said, demonstrating once more.

Trying that, Jace let himself drop forward again very quickly. "Wait."

The other man looked at him, waiting.

"What do I do if I fall over? I should probably know how to fall first."

That earned him an approving look. "Good thinking. Most people either don't think they'll fall, ever, or are panicking about falling. I don't think anyone's ever asked me about _how_ to fall."

Jace shrugged. "Martial arts and acrobatics," he reminded the other man. "Falling is a staple. You always learn how to fall first."

"Right." Tipping himself back up, Martin let go of one rim. "Rule number one: you tuck in your head as far as you can, because you don't want to hit the floor with the back of your head. That'll put you in bed with a concussion. And you put your arm across your thighs and push them down against the seat as hard as you can because you really don't want to smack yourself in the face with your own knees." Giving an extra push with his other hand, he demonstrated.

"I'll try to emulate this when it happens," Jace said. "While I realize I should _practice_ it, this chair doesn’t belong to me yet and that looked like it could bend or break something."

"Rarely," Martin said, grabbing a tube on his chair and turning it right-side up as if it weighed nothing at all. "Now… see that curb?"

It took Jace a few tries to get a feel for the right height by which he had to raise the front wheels off the ground to get up a curb or step, and he had his equilibrium rune on to prevent falls. He was going to try this new skill out more aggressively once he was back home, in the training room in the Lightwood house, where the floors were runed to protect those falling on them.

His extra boost didn't remain unnoticed.

"Are you sure this is the first time you're doing this?" Martin asked suspiciously. "Your balance is incredible."

Jace gave him a disarming grin. "Acrobatics since I was four years old," he said. "Anything else would be quite embarrassing for me."

That seemed to satisfy his instructor as an explanation.

Martin stuck around while Jace tried out his shortlist, adding some advice and corrections here and there.

"Is there anything else you can recommend?" Jace asked while he was thinking over his final choice.

"Let's see…" Martin said. "What kind of exercise are you getting?"

"Gymnastics," Jace told him. "Weight-lifting; archery; riding my horse."

"If you can swim, get back into swimming," the other man advised. "If you can't, learn. It's easy and it's good." He took another moment to study Jace. "You're going to rub yourself raw with those pants. You might want to re-think that."

Jace raised an eyebrow. "Says the man who wears nearly identical ones?"

Martin laughed and reached down to pull one foot up onto the opposite knee, pushing back the leg of his jeans "I wear track pants underneath for padding. Close-fitting ones that won't throw any folds for me to sit on and do more damage."

"Advice noted," Jace said. Now, that was something he could think about implementing. It wouldn't hurt with the temperatures either...

 _Herr_ Köhler was still waiting for them. Apparently, rich customers like Imogen Herondale or her grandson warranted his undivided attention for however long they required or desired it.

"Is there any chance you have this one in stock, but in a variation that fits better with my personal color scheme?" Jace asked, vaguely waving a hand down his front. He was dressed all in black and grey.

As they went back into the sales room, Martin fished a thick catalogue from a holder on the side of the counter and held it out to Jace. "Take this. I realize you probably live too far away for them to deliver anything there, but it might give you inspiration for adjustments you can make to your home. A lot of things can be improvised."

Passing it on to Alec to put away, Jace nodded. "Thank you. Really - for everything."

"No problem at all." Stopping by the counter once again, Martin tore a piece of paper from a block of post-its put there and scribbled on it. "If you come back and need someone to show you around, call me. I'm enrolled at the local university, so I'm around most of the time."

 


	20. Chapter 20

Izzy and Clary were walking through the streets of Heidelberg, trying not to stare at the way mundanes were celebrating the pre-Christmas season here. Every street seemed decorated with lights arranged in the shapes of stars, the forms completed with branches of some kind of evergreen plant.

The city's squares were filled with booths, placed side by side with barely any space to spare, selling colorful trinkets and sweets or even hot food or beverages, with a myriad of smells wafting up and mixing into a bouquet that should have been less harmonious than it was.

Every single shop window seemed decorated with Christmas themes, though the details differed from what they were used to from New York. There were a lot more angels, fruits and nuts, and a lot fewer reindeer and Santa Clauses, for once. Candles featured heavily, and not all of them were electrical.

Isabelle stopped for the first time when they were walking past a bookstore.

"Considering the rate at which Jace is going through the mundane books the Gales gave us to read, do you think we should get him some for New Year's?" she asked Clary.

Her friend considered only a second before she nodded.

It wasn't hard to find the section that held the kind of books they'd mostly been given to read. Once there, however, a problem presented itself.

"Oh," Clary said, her gaze sliding over the spines. "These are all in German."

"We're in Germany," Izzy pointed out. "It's no problem. Jace reads German."

"Yeah. But I don't recognize any of the titles."

They spent a few minutes browsing, reading blurbs to each other to determine if the stories were just too strange to bother, or actually sounding like they might be interesting to read, before Izzy pointed to a different shelf with a grin. "There's an English one!"

Turning towards it, Clary's eyes lit up immediately. A moment later, she held up an ornate box set with several heavily illustrated volumes for Izzy's inspection. "The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion," she said. "These are _total_ classics. This is what we should take."

Izzy leafed through the copies that were on display. "They're pretty, too," she observed. "Alright. One down! Many to go…"

*

The bag holding their books disappeared into Izzy's enlarged messenger bag as they left the bookstore and turned down the street again.

Clary made her way to a booth selling trinkets and small pieces of jewelry. There was something she wanted to make her own Christmas – or New Year's – presents with.

She had brought some money of her own, her dollars converted into the European currency. Not wanting to be indebted to the woman, she had refused Imogen's offer of spending money, and as a result, her finances were a lot more limited than those of the Lightwoods or Jace. She hadn't had her Shadowhunter salary approved yet, and while she was her mother's only heir, getting at her inheritance was a tricky thing.

With no body and no mundane death certificate, it was going to take some work to establish that her mother had, in fact, died. Luke had promised to take care of that, but so far she was limited to what she had in her own account.

Her main gifts were going to be painted, but she needed something to contain them.

"I'll get us something from that stand over there," Izzy said, pointing at one that sold a variety of sweets. "And wait somewhere off to the side. Take your time."

Walking away, she gave Clary the opportunity to preserve the surprise she was planning.

Thanks to a helpful vendor, it didn't take very long for her to pick several plain lockets in which she would be able to set some miniature portraits. The price did seem a bit on the high end, she thought as she went to join her friend again. Had she been expected to bargain?

She decided not to worry about that. She wasn't _that_ short on money.

Izzy had three paper bags that held an assortment of paper cones. She handed one to Clary and pointed at one of the remaining two. "For Max."

"Do we have anything else on our shopping list?" Clary asked, checking her phone to see if Alec and Jace had sent a status update.

"Alec asked me to get a selection of make-up and glitter for Magnus," her friend told her. She pulled a gummy Smurf out of the paper cone in her hand and studied it. "Charlie and Allie said they'd help him charm it all with protections and so on. Other than that, we can go anywhere we like." She held her gummy up for Clary to see. "Clary, what are these creatures?"

*

Imogen hadn't blinked an eye at the price she was quoted. She'd then taken one look at Jace's expression, which clearly stated 'I don't care how you get the other one back to the Institute, I'm staying exactly where I am', made a visible effort not to sigh and sent one of her guards to return the discarded hospital wheelchair.

"I have some errands of my own," she said when they were back outside. "Do you want to collect your friends and go back now, or do you want to spend the day in the city?"

It wasn't hard to guess which option Imogen would have preferred.

"We have some purchases to make," Jace told her. "So we'll go for the day in the city. When and where should we meet you again?"

"There's a café on Main Square that caters to downworlders and Nephilim as well as mundanes," Imogen said. "Hiding out in the open. They serve the best waffles. Be there at nineteenhundred hours. Enjoy Heidelberg."

With that and a last nod at both of them, she left.

"Not telling me to take care of you just cost her," Alec observed, looking at Jace. "She really _is_ trying."

"Yeah," Jace agreed. "But for how long? Besides, you'll do that anyway."

Alec grinned. "Of course I will. And you of me. That's what we do. Now come – let's try and find something for Iz and Clary before we meet up with them again."

They turned down the street in the direction opposite the one Imogen and her remaining guard had gone in.

Jace got the first reminder of his improved situation when a push that would have been required to keep up with Alec at a somewhat reasonable pace almost sent him right into the group walking before them.

He caught his momentum just in time to turn what could have been a crash into a slight touch of footrest against leg, but it was still enough to make the man he had run into turn with an angry expression.

Jace raised his hands in silent apology, opening his mouth to add a verbal one, as the man realized he wasn't staring into anyone's face anywhere around the level he expected it to be and visibly brought his gaze down to where the offender actually was as anger gave way, first to confusion and then to embarrassment.

"Oh. I'm sorry," the man said hastily, before turning back around and hurrying down the street again with his friends.

Wearing a confused frown of his own, Jace looked up at Alec. "Did _he_ just apologize because _I_ ran into him?" he asked.

Alec shrugged. "Mundanes," he said dismissively. "You never know what they're likely to do next."

They continued on their way, with Jace setting the speed and Alec staying by his side. By the time they reached the first corner, Jace had started to notice that Alec was walking normally instead of taking the deliberately slow steps he had before. While he didn't have to weave through a crowd, Jace was once again equaling their normal, brisk walking speed.

"I like this," he declared. "No more feeling like I'm keeping you up."

Alec laughed. "Watch where you're going," he cautioned. "I bet not everyone's going to apologize if you hit them, and I'm not going to save your ass because your navigation skills aren't in keeping with your speed."

As they turned onto a somewhat busier street, they opted for staying near the shop windows, which reduced the risk of people brushing past close enough to catch on the backpack Jace had slung over the low backrest. It had the added benefit that they got a good view of the displays.

Outside an antiques seller's store, they stopped. "Look at that," Jace said, pointing at one of the items on display. A glance at Alec's face told him that his _parabatai_ had already spotted the same thing.

"How does a Nephilim dagger get into a mundane store?" Alec kept his voice down as he studied the weapon.

It was a slim, straight blade, the color of well-polished steel with a suggestion of a folding pattern. The edge was slightly serrated, making the weapon usable as a tool in a pinch. It had the lines of runes etched carefully along the flats of the blade, and embossed on the hilt wrapped in plain black leather.

"I have no idea." Jace studied the designs some more while trying to catch a glimpse of the price tag that, attached to the hilt by a piece of string, had slid below the blade. "But I think we should do everyone a favor and take it off these good people's hands. That'll return the dagger where it belongs, and we have a present for Izzy. Our hands are way too large for that."

"You mean it's too small for our hands," Alec corrected him. "Let's go inside."

Getting up the small step the store was set above street level wasn't much of an issue now, but Jace found himself wrestling with the door a little, which tried to fall shut again, pushing him back into the street. He pushed against it, resolved to be more stubborn than the door, and made a mental note to himself that maybe next time, he'd let Alec enter a store first.

Sure enough, a shop assistant came jumping forward a moment later, jerking back the door and holding it open for him in a manner that was almost comical.

Jace made it the rest of the way in, followed by Alec, who received a glare from the woman.

"Can't you help him?" she all but snapped at him.

"I can," Alec said nonchalantly. "But he didn't ask."

Her eyes sparkled. "Didn't you see he needed help?"

Alec's eyebrows rose a little way towards his hairline. "Actually, he didn't," he pointed out. "He made it inside just fine."

"He's my brother, not my servant," Jace added. "His job is to laugh when I pick a fight with a door that's heavier than I am and lose." He turned, studying the narrow space between various pieces of furniture and trying to determine the best path towards where the dagger lay, with the least risk of damaging any of the pieces presented in the store.

The shop assistant seemed to realize the predicament and pointed to the space just next to the door. "Maybe you better wait here and I'll get whatever you want to see."

"The dagger from the window, please," Jace said, backing into the designated spot. He didn't particularly like the arrangement, but he had to admit that it was sensible if he didn't want to end up having to pay for everything he broke on the way. This store clearly wasn't made for anything built wider than Alec.

He accepted the dagger, catching the price tag in one hand and turning it so he could read the numbers written on it. It was expensive enough to tell them that whoever set the prices here knew a rarity when they saw one.

"Blades with these kind of markings are very rare," the shop assistant explained. "When they do show up, they usually are in bad condition. It's not hard to see that this one has seen some heavy use."

It was true. Up close, the dagger was more worn than it had looked through the window. Turning it, Jace saw what looked like a demon ichor stain near the hilt.

"What's special here is that we clearly have a woman's dagger, but it also very clearly served more than decorative purposes, and it is worked to the same standards as any knight's dagger would have been – and better than many." She paid close attention as Jace turned the blade between his hands, studying the blade against the light from the lamps – which was less than ideal for this purpose, but all he had to work with right then.

He closed his hand around the hilt and felt the blade recognize him as Nephilim. With a little probing, his index and middle fingers found the release, concealed so well in the hilt that they were near-impossible to find if one didn't expect them to be there.

Two shorter blades snapped out at an angle, one of them extending only part of the way. Yes, this would definitely take some work.

A glance at the shop assistant's face showed him some surprise – not of the degree that suggested she hadn't known the extra blades were there, but of the kind that said she hadn't expected him to know.

"It came with a sheath and a pair of gloves, but it's the only thing worth putting on display. The other things would cost more in restoration than they'd fetch in a sale. If you're interested in this kind of object, though, you might have a look at them. They might be of interest for a specialized collector," she said.

"Yes, please," Jace told her, folding the secondary blades back where they belonged.

"Our sister specializes in these," Alec said. "I'm sure she will be able to restore it to glory." He accepted the blade Jace held out for him and gave it a going-over of his own. "Eighthundred is a bit much for it, though, given the condition. Six-fifty, maybe, with the gloves and the sheath?"

*

"Six-fifty with the gloves and the sheath?" Jace blurted out when they were back outside. "For a moment, I thought she was going to throw us out right then!"

"It worked, though, didn't it?" Alec asked. They'd bought the entire set at seven-ten, with a hardwood box added to hold the dagger and afford it some extra protection for transport.

"Only because she really wanted these to go to someone who knew to appreciate them."

Alec shrugged. "Izzy will. And she enjoys a challenge, so this should be right up her alley."

Jace glanced at his phone. "Do you think we have enough time to find a place that sells art supplies and get something nice for Clary?" They had agreed to meet up again for lunch, giving each pair the opportunity to get some secret shopping done, and then continue on through the afternoon together.

"We'll make the time," Alec decided. "Worst case, we'll text them and say we'll be late."

*

They made it, arriving at the pizza chain Clary had chosen for them just moments after the two women.

"Wow," Clary said, taking in Jace as he approached them while they were discussing seating with a waitress. "That looks different."

"Feels different, too," Jace told her. "Light-weight, maneuverable and a lot less restrictive. I feel almost ready to be back in the field."

"Let's not rush that," Clary returned, matching his grin. "I'm still in training, and I'd hate if you went out without me."

They spent their afternoon ambling through the inner city of Heidelberg, dropping into another book store to buy a set of Harry Potter books for Max after they had discovered that their default reaction to any suggested present for him was 'he'll hate that'.

For Maryse, they settled on a variation of Alec's planned present for Magnus, buying a selection of scents and compiling a list of protective charms to add to them.

Determined not to let anything ruin his mood, especially after he had found out that it was entirely possible to propel a wheelchair with one hand without letting go of one's girlfriend's hand with the other, Jace stalwartly ignored the fact that most of the booths were impossible for him to look into and he had to rely on the others to hand him what he wanted to see, and ignore the displeased looks of many a vendor at the way they were handling the goods. He did end up buying an elaborate calligraphy set from one of the booths, making use of the offered service of personalizing the pen by having his grandmother's name engraved in it. Adding a box of fine sealing wax, he hoped to have picked something of sufficiently good quality and sophistication to meet with Imogen's approval.

With the essentials taken care of and planning to leave as much of the money they had brought in Heidelberg as possible that day, they started on the stage of frivolous spending after that, treating themselves to anything that caught their eye.

Bags of bath pearls, bath bombs and massage oil were packed away, followed by scented candles and a selection of plush animals to distribute among the Gale children.

They were standing aside while Alec waited his turn to buy a gingerbread heart marked with tufts in multi-colored icing around the edges, with a bold message of eternal love written diagonally across the dark-brown center.

Tapping Izzy's arm with one finger to get her attention, Jace pointed towards another stall, displaying t-shirts and hoodies with a variety of prints. "Let's get him one of those," he suggested. "And slip it into his bag."

She followed where he pointed, laughing when she found a shirt that read "If archery was easy, we'd call it soccer" in orange letters on black.

Once they moved away from the Christmas market, they gravitated into a shop specializing in antique books. The small sales room was well and truly filled with just the four of them, but the proprietor didn’t seem to mind.

Instead of being hurried through their purchases, they found themselves seated around a low table, with cups of coffee produced from a side room, as the proprietor took his time presenting various volumes to them that fit the themes they named, alternating enthusiastic background information on the books he put before them with equally enthusiastic assurances of how great it was that young people like them showed an interest in old books.

"If you don't mind my asking," the man said as they were browsing an ancient book covering mundane angel legends. "The tattoos you wear – do they have meaning?"

Alec rubbed a hand over his deflection rune. "They are symbolic, yes," he admitted. "And they mark us as belonging together."

Neither of those was a lie.

Nodding gravely, the man seemed to be thinking about something. "I could swear I saw some of these on the covers of some books recently," he mused.

They looked at each other, with Alec and Jace exchanging a look so long that the other two couldn't possibly miss that there was something going on they didn't know about.

Heidelberg housed a large institute, and had so for many centuries. As a result of having a large number of Shadowhunter items passing through the city, it was only logical to assume that a piece would end up in the hands of mundanes and make its way into mundane shops now and then.

Still, having several items show up in two unconnected shops at the same time did seem unusual.

The simplest explanation for that was that they'd come from the same source, each piece sold where it would fetch the best price or command most interest.

"May we see the books?" Alec asked.

"Certainly," came the instant answer. "But they do not cover any of the things you just mentioned. They are more… architectural in nature."

He brought them two volumes, bound in brown leather that was broken and fraying along the spine, the paper brittle and broken in places. The marks burned and stamped into the front cover left no doubt that these were of Nephilim origin.

Alec opened one of them carefully, turning pages until he came to an illustration.

"I know that place," Izzy and Clary said almost as one.

The two young men looked at them with some surprise.

"That day trip Clary and I went on a few months ago," Izzy said. "That is definitely the same place."

The Adamant Citadel? That was the only place where Clary and Izzy had gone that the other two had never laid eyes on.

"I think we should take these." Jace made every effort not to sound too eager. "And the angel one. Assuming that we still have enough money between us, that is."

*

From the book store, they slowly made their way to their rendezvous point with Imogen. The sky had darkened to a near-black by now, but the streets were brightly lit by street lights and Christmas decorations.

In spite of the season and the time of the day, the cafés along the streets and squares had tables outside and they picked one, ordering waffles and hot chocolate to enjoy while they were waiting for Imogen to show up.

When she did, she merely nodded at them, indicating with a motion of her hand that they shouldn't hurry on her account, and settled at a nearby table with her guard, placing an order of her own.

Alec leaned back in his chair, letting his eyes wander. Heidelberg was still busy, with people walking here and there, coming out of and disappearing into each of the alleys leading off the square between buildings – with one notable exception.

Blinking on his magic vision, he found that he saw nothing unusual that way – the abandoned alley was just as dark to it as all the others were. He sketched a charm on his skin under the table and checked once again.

Sure enough – he saw something now. He indicated the direction for the others with a movement of his head. "Demon heat signature," he mouthed.

That brought all of them instantly alert and sitting up straighter.

"Want to check it out?" Jace asked, a gleam in his eyes that told Alec that his _parabatai_ was praying for a positive answer.

"Are you armed?" he asked back. It was a purely rhetorical question. Of course they were. Izzy and Clary nodded, while Jace twitched the front of his jacket aside, exposing one of his throwing knives to Alec's view. Where there was one, there would be more.

"It just stopped being a matter of 'want'," Izzy said, though there was no doubt that she, too, _wanted_ to. Too far away for any of them to jump up and intervene before they reached the entrance to the alley, two mundanes were walking towards it. They weren't talking or even seeming to acknowledge each other's presence. Instead, they moved with the mechanical, almost robotic movements of those enchanted.

Quickly doing the math, Alec counted out the money for their food and drinks, added a tip, and put it on the table, with a plate holding it in place.

They rose, silently sliding around the tables on the side opposite where Imogen was sitting. Their glamors came on as soon as they had reached a spot where they thought they'd not confuse anyone by suddenly disappearing from plain sight.

Alec felt a little giddy as he took his replacement bow off his back where it had been kept all day, safely concealed from mundane eyes. What if he messed up again?

He called himself to order quickly and sternly. He hadn't messed up the first time either. He'd been sent into combat with a useless weapon. This one had not left his possession once since he'd bought it, and he had checked it only that morning.

He equally stomped down on any second thoughts he was having regarding Jace's involvement. He could handle himself, and with a ranged weapon he wasn't going to be in any kind of direct proximity with the demon.

"Swords ahead," Alec whispered. "We'll cover you."

Dropping everything that would weigh them down close to the corner of their destination and leaving a large protective charm on it, they fell into a loose formation.

The enchanted mundanes in their slow, plodding manner had made it a way down the alley, almost reaching a place where another, even smaller one branched off between two houses.

Between one instant and the next, a dark shape rose from the blackness by the flagstones that paved the ground. They could see the writhing shapes of tendrils, probing feeler-like as if tasting the air, while other, longer appendages unfolded into multi-jointed arms.

Alec's first arrow flew as Izzy and Clary surged forward, blades drawn.

The demon reared back, screeching in a voice so high it hurt their ears and shattering the spell on the two it had lured to feed on. Their screams were only marginally less unpleasant to hear.

A red-fledged arrow protruded from the demon's body now, close to the edge of where what must have been the trunk ended and the limbs began. Alec had aimed in hopes of ending the thing's presence on this plane with a single shot, but the sudden whip-like movement of his opponent had saved it.

As Izzy and Clary pushed the mundanes aside none-too-gently, ordering them to get the hell out of there and not look back in voices that would hopefully be able to penetrate their fear, the demon uncoiled another section of its body, towering over the two women.

*

Imogen looked around to check if Jace and his friends seemed to be about ready to leave before deciding if she was going to order another coffee for herself or not, only to realize that the table the four young Nephilim had been sitting at was now empty.

She glanced around the square with increasing urgency, hoping to spot them somewhere.

The thing that split the air wasn't quite what one could call a sound. It seemed beyond human – or Nephilim – hearing, but it cut through her nevertheless, and she saw her reaction mirrored in her guard, who tensed, reaching for his concealed blade.

The mundanes around them continued to go about their respective businesses, apparently entirely oblivious to it that something that did not belong in their safe little world had just made its presence unmistakably known.

*

Izzy and Clary moved at full Nephilim speed, blades flashing.

Fully aware that he couldn't hit the core in a target moving so fast and so randomly, Alec focused on pelting the larger area where body met limbs with a quick rain of arrows. The best he could do from where he stood was to hamper its movements to give the other two the opening they needed.

The hilt of a throwing knife sprouted from the demon's body, aimed close to where the thing's maws were.

Another screech came from it as it drew itself up to its full height once again, ready to launch itself forward.

Izzy danced in, evading one arm and slashing at another with a dagger in her off hand before she brought up her sword-hand, meeting the demon as it came down.

The tip of her blade found its core, not even leaving the creature time to scream a third time before it disintegrated into a rain of black ashes.

They stood, panting, for a moment.

Then movement along the edge of the alley caught Alec's eye.

"Watch out! There are more of them!"

*

Imogen and her guard were already on their feet when the second scream sounded. Without thinking, she turned in the direction it came from, certain that, somehow, Jace and his friends had to be involved.

She glanced back once, expecting her guard right behind her to receive orders, and saw that he was not.

An angry waitress had accosted him, demanding payment for their drinks, and there was no way he could simply push her aside without drawing the kind of attention among the mundanes that would require far too long to clear up.

Without waiting for him, Imogen hurried on, a hand on the sword she carried but had not used in actual combat in far too long. She was Nephilim and she had once trained for the field. Her grandson was out there somewhere, helpless even though he still clung to the idea that he was not.

She could only hope his friends would remember to defend him for long enough.

*

The humanoid shapes that detached themselves from spaces between buildings and flooded into the alley weren't demons.

The cruel beauty of their faces, the vines and blossoms growing in their skin, visible in the scant lighting, their leather armor and even the shapes of the swords they wielded were strange and familiar at once. These were Seelie knights, but clearly not of the court they dealt with in New York.

Alec shot his arrows in quick succession, barely taking the time to aim. Several of the attackers lay on the ground, red-fledged arrows in their throats, where the leather armor didn't afford them any protection. Their more foreseeable movements allowed him safe shots.

Izzy and Clary were engaged in close combat, each of them keeping two attackers at bay. Izzy had switched to her electrum whip, snapping it into its staff shape that allowed her a longer reach and gave her something to parry with.

Jace's throwing knives found their targets one by one, until one of the Seelie made it through, swinging a sword at him. The movement seemed somewhat off, as if he was uncertain of what to do with an opponent who was sitting down and making no move to get to his own level.

Jace ducked, evading the blow, and came up with a dagger in each hand, burying one of them to the hilt in the arm that wielded the sword.

The Seelie's face distorted with rage, and he hissed something that Jace could only interpret in that he felt insulted by the fact that this Nephilim didn't even seem to think him worth the trouble of getting to his feet.

Before he could dispose of his second dagger in his attacker's body, he found himself wrenched forward and upward by hands digging into his clothes, and it was half reflex and half his hand-to-hand sessions with Alec that made him grab for the Seelie's armor and hold on as if his life depended on it.

Instead of being thrown, they both went down, crashing in a tangle of limbs as Jace's useless legs got into the Seelie's way.

 _Not quite so useless_ , a thought shot through his mind. _Still very useful for tripping people up._

They rolled, grappling for the dagger. At the edge of his awareness, Jace noted that, having used up his arrows, Alec had switched to his sword as well.

*

Imogen felt as if her heart was about to stop when she turned into the alley and saw the scene before her. The four had clearly been attacked by superior numbers, and they were fighting valiantly.

Why was the Heidelberg Institute not sending any reinforcements? They had to know that there was something going on here!

The demon was nowhere to be seen, which was some slight relief.

Seeing that her fears had been well-founded and the other three had, indeed, forgotten about protecting Jace, who was lying on the ground, fighting for his life against a Seelie attacker, was not.

She was about to rush forward to come to her grandson's aid when a shadow fell on her.

As she looked up, spotting the dark shape rising, higher and higher, jaws open and ready to strike, she heard that terrible scream for the third time that night.

*

Jace found himself on top of the Seelie as their momentum tapered out, and he slammed one hand down into his would-be killer's throat, cutting off his air and keeping him busy reflexively clawing at his hand for long enough to allow him to bring down the hilt of the dagger hard against the base of the Seelie's skull.

The body beneath him went still, and Jace took a deep breath as he looked up.

Izzy and Clary were doing well, and Alec clearly had the upper hand in the duel he was fighting, but one of the fallen figures moved and came to her feet, in that quick, noiseless and fluent manner that only Seelie could accomplish even while already wounded.

The knife in his hand went flying, hitting right between the target's shoulder blades before she could reach Alec.

He froze as another demon screech sounded.

Another one?

It had come from the entrance of the alley, and Jace's head whipped around, incredulously taking in the pale shape of Imogen Herondale standing, sword in hand, staring at the creature.

Without thinking, he yanked his other dagger out of the Seelie's arm, flipping it to grasp the blade and hoping that the blood wouldn't make him slip. Drawing back his arm, he put every ounce of strength he possessed into the throw.

The weapon flew straight and true. The demon, too intent on the Nephilim meal before it, didn't have the time to evade before the blade buried itself in its body, slicing through its demonic core and banishing the creature back to the plane it had come from.

The sounds of footsteps made Jace turn away again before he could take in Imogen's reaction. His hands were already going for another set of blades, but as it turned out, the other three had merely finished their part of the fighting and were coming over.

"Great throw," Alec said. "All of them, but the last two in particular."

Before Jace could reply, there was a flurry of motion at the entrance of the alley, with more humanoid shapes rushing their way.

Their hands on their weapons tightened again immediately as they fell into ready positions, only to realize that these were Nephilim, rather than another contingent of Seelie. The cavalry had arrived.


	21. Chapter 21

"Would anyone care to explain to me how any of this could happen?"

Gloria Whitechapel, head of the Heidelberg Institute, was looking at each of them in turn, her tone dangerously calm.

They were standing in two groups, the four of them slightly apart from the group of Nephilim belonging to the Institute. They had already summarized the battle for her. The others had only been able to confirm that their narrative fit the situation they had found upon arrival.

"Why did you – who were in Heidelberg for your own pleasure and not on assignment – consider it the appropriate reaction to take up arms and throw yourselves into a fight? You were not familiar with the situation and knew nothing about any plans the Institute may have had already." Her expression darkened as her eyes rested on Jace. "And with one of you already injured."

"I beg to differ," Jace said. "My last wound is healed and I believe I have shown today that I can still hold my own if I need to. How many Seelies did you retrieve my daggers from?"

She ignored that, turning her stare at Alec.

He made a valiant effort not to squirm.

"It was a situation that required a quick decision," he said. "We saw two mundanes being lured by a demon. We had reason to assume that to call in the Institute or wait for backup would mean their deaths. What we found when we followed them proved us right. If we'd been seconds later, they would have been dead. What I would like to know is what exactly the Seelie and their two pet demons were doing there and why they had escaped attention before."

"They had _not_ escaped attention," Whitechapel snapped.  "We had them under surveillance. They had not done anything illegal before today."

"What _I_ would like to know," Imogen interrupted her, her tone hard as steel and her eyes cold as ice, "is why, if you had them under surveillance, it took so long for your people to arrive."

"We did not take long!" The leader of the Heidelberg Nephilim protested. "In fact, we made very good speed. Those four were too fast."

"We were right on site," Alec said reasonably. "We saw a situation that required action, and we took action accordingly. We did not expect the Seelie contingent, or the second demon, but both were within what we could handle. I would question the surviving Seelie to find out their purpose, however. Unless yours behave entirely differently from the ones in New York, this kind of close association with demons is unusual."

Gloria Whitechapel scoffed. "We would love to. Unfortunately, there are no survivors."

Alec frowned. "That can't be right. I know we left several alive."

"It appears that they were marked with spells," a man standing at Whitechapel's shoulder said. "They were triggered the moment they were brought onto Institute grounds."

"How convenient," Imogen said.

The Head of the Institute turned towards her. "Are you implying anything, Inquisitor?"

"No," Imogen returned immediately. "But the way I see it, you should be thanking these four young people for taking an immense threat off of your hands and not letting it turn into a complete disaster. By the time your own people made it down from the Institute, they could have lured in several more mundanes. For all we know, they could have planned to wreak havoc on that square once strengthened a little."

The other woman's lips thinned. It was clear that she disliked the idea of putting on record that a group of Nephilim on a holiday had done the work that should have been performed by her Institute. It was equally clear that she knew she wasn't going to get around it.

"I will send a full report to Alicante, of course," she said. "And recommend a commendation for these four." Her smile turned dangerously sweet as she turned back to them. "For saving Inquisitor Herondale from a demon attack."

If she was hoping to embarrass Imogen with that statement, her plans didn't work out. The Inquisitor nodded. "That is no less than they deserve," she said. "You may also want to consider sending one of the Seelie corpses to Alicante – one of the ones that suffered the spell damage. Isabelle here is a highly skilled forensic pathologist. She may be able to help us track the spells."

*

It was much later than they had planned to return when they finally made it back home. The house seemed undisturbed at first glance.

A second, more careful inspection quickly taught them differently. There were a number of small things that were almost right, but not quite. Whoever had gone through their things had been careful, but unable to precisely recreate the order of pencils on Jace's desk, as evidenced by the fact that when he sat in front of it and reached for one without thinking, his hand hit the tabletop instead; the arrangement of Alec's clothes, with a stack of t-shirts left too close to the door of the closet, causing the protrusion of the fitting on the inside to leave an impression in them; or the change to the angle at which the paintings still left in the downstairs corridor were leaning against the wall, which was just enough to require Clary to adjust them again to make sure they stood securely enough for her to go through with passengers.

They checked the bugs they knew of and found that they had been replaced by a different model.

Rolling her eyes at them, Izzy sketched silencing charms on the surfaces around them. She liked the idea of making their father wonder why exactly the new model was working even less than the old one.

"I wonder if there are any more around than these," she said when she was done.

"Text the Gales and ask if there's a discovery charm?" her brother suggested. They should have done that weeks ago, he realized. It had never seemed relevant, since they'd learned about the bugs being there by learning that they didn't work, but it was still an oversight on their end.

"Huh," Izzy said, looking at the screen in confusion a few minutes after she had sent the question. "My phone's updating."

"Mine, too." Clary had taken hers out as well.

By the time they had checked Alec and Jace's phones, all four had almost finished running their updates. After a reboot, each of them presented with a new app icon on the screen. It was, unimaginatively, labeled "Bug-Finder".

"Well, that works, too." Izzy had opened the app, which showed her the camera screen, overlaid with a large red arrow pointing at a red, pulsating dot representing the closest one of the bugs they knew. She tapped it and marked it as 'known'.

Spreading through the house, they found and silenced five more in the rooms they used, as well as one each in Max's bedroom and the bedroom the elder Lightwoods used when home, even though they hadn't been in those rooms all the time they'd been there, with the single exception of that time they'd gone over the entire building with their wards.

They didn't even enter Robert's study to check for bugs there, but left an assortment of silencing charms on and around the door and at intervals on the walls.

Only when they were satisfied that they were done did Clary go to collect Magnus and everything they had previously removed from the house.

*

_December 6 th, 2016_

There was someone in the living room when Jace came out of his and Clary's room the next morning to start taking care of breakfast.

He decided on a detour to check on whoever was up already, marveling again at how easily the new wheelchair moved. One strong push could carry him a good way, which was a great relief for his shoulders and arms. The narrower seat made for a narrower chair, which in return required the doorframe charms to do far less work, too.

The early riser turned out to be Magnus, who was sitting in the armchair and perusing the catalog Jace had brought home.

"Amazing, how many things mundanes have invented, isn't it?" he asked.

Magnus looked up. "They've always been an inventive lot," he allowed. "And not quite as opposed to cooperation as the Clave. I don't think there's been a Nephilim inventor willing to work with a warlock since Henry Branwell."

"If you have any great ideas for new inventions, let us know," Jace told him. "I'm sure none of us would mind cooperating with a warlock."

That brought him a chuckle. "I didn't know any of you were aspiring inventors." He tapped the catalog. "But actually, I was thinking that this would be easy enough to implement with some magic."

Moving in to see what Magnus was indicating, Jace found himself looking at a variety of systems that could carry a person – or even a wheelchair with a person in it – up a flight of stairs.

"I'm not sure I need to be upstairs," Jace pointed out. "I'd really rather keep the room with the attached bathroom, so the only thing I'd do up there would be to watch Clary paint."

"Would you like to watch Clary paint?" Magnus asked. His eyes clearly said that he knew the answer already.

Jace smiled at the thought. "Well, yes," he allowed. "But I can wait. It's only going to be—" He broke off. "We're still supposed to make it seem as if we're expecting this to last for longer. What do you think we'd need?"

"A square of material that'll carry your weight and two objects to mount on either end of the stairs to anchor the spells in so you can activate them at need," Magnus said. "We can use a rune to mark the starting and end points, a hover spell on the lift and spells for calling and sending it off on the anchors."

"You've thought this through," Jace observed.

A grin lit up Magnus' face. "I like working on gadgets."

The thought made Jace laugh. "I've heard of the snake you made for Camille."

"Simon told you?" Magnus seemed surprised – rightfully so, since Simon and Jace weren't exactly what one would call best buddies most of the time.

"He told Clary, and Clary told me," Jace admitted. "It sounded neat, by the way."

"It's a masterpiece." Pride was clear in Magnus' voice. "This would be a lot less elaborate. If we were actually looking into permanent solutions, I might try to create something portable for you, but I fear the time that'd go into that would exceed the time for which you'll need it."

Jace nodded. "Maybe you can find pieces in the junk up on the attic. That’s a bit hard for me to get to right now, so you'll have to take Alec or Izzy to check. I'd like just being able to sit with Clary when she works now and then. I've never seen her actually paint in oils."

"Acrylics," Magnus corrected.

*

"So Imogen is currently sending around messages pressing for a commendation for all four of you and restoration of Alec and Izzy's active status," Lydia said between two bites of pizza. She had sent a fire message earlier, asking if their open invitation for lunch was still open. "You must have really impressed her."

"Last I heard, we managed to take down two demons and twelve Seelie Knights," Alec said. "And Jace saved her life after she walked into a battle entirely unprepared."

"Not entirely unprepared," Izzy corrected. "At least she remembered to take her sword out. You wonder how she got that old without any battle experience." She shook her head at her own words. "No, scratch that. That's exactly how she got that old."

Lydia bit her lip to keep from laughing. "She was looking at a list of regular training sessions available in Alicante when I entered her office," she told them. "I think being outperformed by her grandson hit her harder than she lets on."

"I bet she'd be far less concerned about being outperformed by her grandson if I'd done it standing up," Jace said. "Besides, the thing that went through my mind at that moment was that we'd never be able to explain how exactly we managed to get Inquisitor Herondale eaten by a demon. Tell her that if you think it makes her feel any better."

"You killed four Seelie and a demon," Lydia pointed out. "That's pretty impressive either way."

"Three Seelie and a demon," Jace corrected. "I really only knocked out the fourth."

"I'd never thought I'd say this," Alec said. "But I hope they'll take their time with reinstating our status. I don't want to leave just yet, and I don't want to serve under _Aldertree_ again, ever." Of course they'd be in a better situation to deal with Hawkfeather in the New York Institute. That was the only thing they'd be in a better situation for, however.

 "Heidelberg sent an official message this morning, _also_ suggesting a commendation for you all, and announcing they'd send over one of the Seelie corpses and were expecting Izzy's report on the autopsy. A number of people are quite unhappy with that," Lydia continued. "It won't look good if they simply have someone else do it without explanation, especially giving your involvement with how the Seelie ended up dead, and any explanation would lead to questions on what you all were doing in Heidelberg in the first place."

Alec's face took on a thoughtful expression as he leaned his chin on one hand. "We're not under arrest," he pointed out. "And Jace was cleared for travelling. So why wouldn't we be in Heidelberg?"

"There's an investigation pending against you, though it hasn't gone anywhere yet." Lydia held her plate out as Clary offered her another slice of pizza from the large baking tray. "They should have at least been tracking you, but for some reason neglected to do that. Your father is livid, by the way."

Izzy laughed. "Because we went out untracked, or because his bugs aren't working again?"

"Bugs?" Lydia's hand froze halfway to her mouth.

"The kind that record your conversations and send the recordings somewhere," Izzy elaborated. "He hid almost a dozen of them in the house. We hid wards in the house that disturb the signal. He used yesterday to replace them. We replaced the wards so he can have a bit of variety in his interference."

Lydia's face grew serious. "Your father didn't hide anything yesterday," she told them. "He was in the Gard almost all the time, just racing from one appointment to the next."

"Then he sent someone else," Izzy said. "It doesn't really make much of a difference, does it?" She turned to look at her brother.

Alec was only listening with half an ear, his expression thoughtful and remote.

"Alicante to Alec," Izzy said. "Are you dreaming of Magnus, big brother?"

He blinked and focused. "No. I was thinking of something else."

"Care to share it with us?"

"Yeah." Alec look at each of them in turn. "I'm under investigation. You're officially off duty because of the _yin fen_. Clary's not even half-trained and Jace is the Herondale heir and not officially in any kind of fighting condition. So _why_ _were we not tracked_?"

*

_December 7 th, 2016_

A fire message for Izzy had arrived over breakfast. She was to report to the medical lab at her earliest convenience, since the Heidelberg Institute had requested her specific input on the precise manner in which the last of the Seelie posse had died. The message was to be presented at the entrance to prove her authorization to enter the building.

While she understood the missive to mean 'Drop what you are doing and get yourself over here', she decided that jumping up from breakfast with her cup only half-empty was definitely not convenient. Neither was leaving while it was her turn to clear the table and do the dishes.

In theory, her earliest convenience also would have been after she completed her morning obligations towards Clary, but that seemed to be pushing her luck a little.

Instead, they decided to see if they could manage to make the invitation extend to two people. After all, Clary _was_ supposed to be educated, and seeing the insides of a Seelie surely would be very educational.

The building that housed the lab was adjacent to the hospital, with several corridors connecting the two.

The street entrance brought the two young women into a small, bare room with a set of worn armchairs that had once been green and now seemed to be trying for some shade of yellow. Back when smoking had been in fashion, this had probably been a place for those people to meet on their breaks to feed their habit, considering the still-lingering hint of tobacco smell in the air as they passed the seats.

Izzy crossed the room with quick steps, knocking on a glass window that afforded the person sitting in the adjacent office a look at everyone who entered the building.

An older woman looked up from the forms she was filling in, turning and lifting her eyebrows at the two.

Wordlessly, Izzy held up the message, placing it against the glass so the woman could see the signature.

The window was slid aside so she could reach for the paper, which Izzy relinquished without protest.

The woman frowned. "This only speaks of you, Miss Lightwood," she noted. "Who have you brought with you?"

"Clary Fairchild," Izzy said brightly. "She's my student. I believe she will profit greatly from watching."

A vague sound replaced an articulated reply, as the woman turned towards her screen and tapped a few buttons. "I can't let her in just like that," she informed them, swiveling her chair back towards the window. "You aren't authorized to bring company. Actually, I'm surprised they authorized you to come in yourself."

Izzy wondered what exactly the clearance the woman had just checked out said. Instead of asking, she put on a sweet expression. "Maybe you could ask whoever so illegibly signed this message to me," she suggested. "Please let them know that if I can't bring my student, I won't be able to perform the autopsy before tonight. I cannot drop my prior obligations just like that."

The expression that brought her shifted between surprised, impressed, exasperated and amused in rapid succession. "I wouldn't be that impertinent in your position," the woman said.

"You're not in my position," Izzy pointed out. "And I take my obligations very seriously. Please. I can do it now and show Clary how it works, or I can come back later on my own. I have no preferences either way."

With another glance at the message, the woman closed the window again before she called whoever had sent the summons. She was probably wondering if Izzy was being difficult on purpose, or actually trying to reconcile two opposite requirements – that of a speedy start of the autopsy, and that of fulfilling the duties she already had.

Had she given the matter some serious thought, she surely would have come to the conclusion that the two were not mutually exclusive.

Izzy stood at ease, looking around just as Clary did.

"I like it better when I can just swipe my stele and go in," she confessed to her friend.

Clary gave her an understanding smile. "You've been here before?"

"Actually, I did some of my training here." A glance showed her that the woman was talking to a middle-aged Nephilim with a number of sight enhancement runes visible over his collar that suggested his eyes were already going the mundane way and deteriorating from age. She wondered what he would say if she told him that the very runes he was using to fix his issues were likely contributing to making them worse.

"What do you think you'll find in the Seelie?" Clary wanted to know.

Izzy shrugged. "I try to go in with an open mind and zero expectations," she claimed.

"But you must have some idea?"

"Spell damage," Izzy said. "Internal bleeding maybe, or blocked vessels or airways. The only way it'll help us with anything is if we can determine a specific MO that we know to track to a specific warlock. Chances of that are… slim, to say the least. But hey – cutting into things and dissecting them is interesting, so whatever makes them happy..."

The window opened once again, and the woman pointed. "You can both go in. You know the way, I assume?"

"I do, thank you!" Izzy said brightly, waving Clary along with her as the woman in the front office leaned over to press a button that released the door to a corridor leading towards the labs.

"Not a very welcoming place," Clary noted. Izzy was taking them through bare corridors with tiled floors. Some of the walls were covered in tiles as well, reaching all the way to the ceiling. The rest was painted white with a glossy sheen. Runes were put at various intervals, cleansing the air and alerting everyone present in case any unexpected contamination occurred.

Looking at her, Izzy waved her hand in a dismissive motion. "Most who come in here are either working here or dead, so that's hardly relevant."

She turned towards an unlabeled door that took them into a room lined with benches and lockers. Moving towards the latter, Izzy retrieved coats, gloves and face masks, handing one set to Clary. "These are to protect everything from being contaminated by us," she said. "You can put them on right away. They all have cleansing runes integrated that we can activate if we need to touch anything that needs to stay pure."

As she spoke, Izzy tied back her hair, making sure that no strands were hanging loose.

She had just slid into her coat and put her stele into its breast pocket when the door opened again to admit two more people. One of them was the man the woman out front had talked to.

"Miss Lightwood, thank you for making the time," he said without preamble. "I am Harold Blackwater. And I am sorry to inconvenience you so. You must have left quite an impression with the head of the Heidelberg Institute."

"I believe it was Inquisitor Herondale's mention of my work in this area," Isabelle replied, taking the hand he offered in a firm grip. "I have no doubt that you have no need of my help, but if we can make the Institute and the Inquisitor happy…" she shrugged. "And it's a nice opportunity to show Clary a thing or two, too."

Blackwater's eyes rested on Clary for a moment. "The Morgenstern girl," he observed.

"Fairchild," Clary corrected. "Valentine may have been my mother's husband, but she renounced him and his name a long time ago, and I refuse any association with it."

"Fairchild, then," Blackwater said. He didn't offer her his hand. "Don't make me regret I let you in."

"I won't," Clary promised.

Izzy could tell she was making an effort to keep her features neutral. "Anything I should know?" she asked, changing the subject. "About the Seelie?"

Blackwater held open the door, a clear sign that he wanted them to come with him rather than waste any more time standing around in the changing room. Izzy moved, trusting to Clary to follow on her own. Blackwater's companion, a woman who couldn't have been any older than Clary, fell into step behind him.

"The usual," Blackwater said. "The Institute in Heidelberg found no signs of a known MO on the corpses they autopsied last night, but you know how Institute autopsies are." His tone made it clear that he didn't think all too highly of them. "Still, it'd be a great stroke of luck if you found anything on this one either. If you ask me, this entire thing is a waste of everyone's time."

Of course – she, too, was an Institute pathologist. His misgivings towards those would extend to her just the same even without whatever entries her file currently held. Unfortunately, Izzy had to silently agree with him on principle: It was highly unlikely that she was going to find anything they could use to track the warlock who had set the spells.

Clary's presence was the main thing that made this little interlude worthwhile. Surely it would be educational for her – provided that she wouldn't faint at the sight of Seelie insides. Never one of the queasy sort herself, Isabelle realized she hadn't even thought to ask her friend if she could stomach watching an autopsy.

Well, if she had reason to believe she couldn't, surely Clary would have spoken up on her own.

She had no time to think about the matter any more, since Blackwater was speaking again. "Miss Foxhunter here will assist you and take your notes," he said, indicating the woman who was still tagging along silently. "She's one of our current trainees."

That probably made her somewhat younger than Clary, Izzy corrected her original assumption. She turned towards her, giving her a quick scrutiny. At least she didn't look as if she resented being put in that position. Good. That would make their work a little more relaxed.

They had reached their destination by now, entering a room prepared for the work they were about to commence. The dead Seelie had been removed from the stasis box and placed on a table already.

Izzy quickly went over the instruments that were laid out, making sure that nothing was missing.

"I will leave you to it," Blackwater said when he saw her pick up a scalpel. "I expect a full report from you so I can compare Miss Foxhunter's notes against it."

Did he? Izzy cast another glance at the young woman who was standing by the door, apparently uncertain of where to put herself. Yes, she could believe that this was a trainee whose work would be counter-checked. Nevertheless, trainees were also known to be very thorough with their notes, since they hadn't had the time yet to develop an eye for what could be discarded. She'd continue to assume that it was just as likely that he wanted to check _her_ report against the trainee's until proven differently. Still, she was going to conduct a very detailed autopsy, and see how long the young woman could keep up with it.

"Come over here, Miss Foxhunter," Izzy told her. "You won't see what I'm doing from where you stand." Clary was already taking a place near the Seelie's head, from where she had a good view of what Izzy was doing without being in the way. She'd let her stay there.

"Yes, Miss Lightwood," the young woman said meekly as she crossed the room.

"Izzy," Izzy corrected her. "If you don't mind. I'm not your teacher, so no need to stand on formality."

"Izzy," she repeated. "I'm Sophie." She stood where indicated, her notepad in hand.

Isabelle reached for the recording device and activated it.

"We have a male Seelie, indeterminate age, presumed cause of death: spell damage," she started to dictate, walking slowly around the naked corpse. "No visible scarring on the front of the body. The vines in his skin are fully wilted and dried. Clary, that there is a camera. Can you grab that and take pictures of them?"

Clary did as she was asked, fiddling with the device for a few seconds before figuring out how it worked. "I didn't know these vines are actually alive," she said. "I always thought they were more like… tattoos?"

"Living tattoos comes pretty close," Izzy told her before turning back to her recorder. "He has a fresh stab wound in his right bicep, made by an adamas throwing dagger of the 2012 series. Beginning bruising at the base of the skull, to the left of the spine. He died before the bruise could fully form. Injury caused by the hilt of a full-metal throwing knife, forged in one piece, with adamas inlay in the blade."

"You can tell that from the wounds?" Sophie's voice held so much awe that Izzy almost regretted correcting her.

"No. But he had my brother to thank for these injuries and I know which weapons he uses. I gave him that dagger." She glanced at the younger woman to gage her reaction, but her face was unreadable for the moment.

Izzy proceeded to take several measurements, recording the results.

Once done with everything she could gather without opening the corpse, she picked up a scalpel and drew a line across her subject's forehead, preparing to fold back the scalp so she could open the skull and remove the brain. There was her first candidate for spell damage.

Finding nothing, other than the beginnings of swollen tissue that suggested that Jace had hit hard enough to do some real damage, Izzy weighed and measured the brain, made her notes and put the organ aside.

"Does your boss want the organs back in the corpse, or is he going to use them for instruction?" Izzy asked with a glance at Sophie.

She was caught by surprise at having a question directed at her, even though it wasn't connected to the autopsy as such, and took a moment to answer. "Instruction, I think," she said. "There are stasis containers in that cabinet."

Following the line her pointing finger suggested with her eyes, Izzy nodded. "Clary, can you get me some?"

She put the opened skull back in place and folded the scalp back over it, fusing it down to keep it from slipping. "I always clean up while I work," Izzy said as she noticed the trainee's questioning look. "That's literally the only thing I ever learned from helping my mother in the kitchen."

Taking up a scalpel again, Izzy plunged the tip into the skin of the dead Seelie's torso.

"If you're familiar with Nephilim physiology, you will see several differences here, Clary," she explained. "Note the number of ribs, for one. You will see that the size and shape of several organs is different, too. The heart, for example, has six chambers. Well, this is a mess…"

The inside of the Seelie's chest cavity was a mass of congealed blood, making it hard to see anything at all.

"Picture, please, before I pick anything apart here."

She kept an eye on Clary's face, but her friend either didn't mind the sight and smell of blood, didn't equate Seelie blood with "blood", or had a lot more self-control than she would have given her credit for.

"Sophie, what do you think? What would cause this kind of hemorrhage?"

Sophie paled, though not at the sight of the blood, but at the concept of having been asked a question that did, actually, relate to the autopsy, as far as Izzy could tell.

"It's not a trick question," Izzy reassured her. "Your guess is as good as mine at this point, because I can see exactly as much as you can, which is nothing at all. We know they died within seconds of the spell being triggered, so this likely wasn’t a gradual bleed."

"Aorta?" the trainee hazarded a guess. "If it all comes from the same place? Because anything else that's going to bleed fast enough for this would more likely bleed into the abdominal cavity? And the heart didn't stop pumping?"

Izzy suppressed an urge to tell Sophie to eliminate question marks from her verbal repertoire for the foreseeable future. "That'd be my guess," she agreed as she started to cut through bone again so she could get at the organs. "Clary, you can tell Jace he managed to crack three ribs here, in case he's interested."

Digging her fingers into the congealed Seelie blood was like digging through jelly. It had a consistency that wasn't anything like clotted Nephilim blood at all. Izzy discarded lumps of the substance in an oblong bowl until she had exposed the heart.

"I'd love to just wash this away, but I can tell you from experience that water will do exactly nothing about it," she informed Clary as she lifted the heart a little with one hand, following the thick tubes of blood vessels running into it with her other until her fingers slid through a hole in the otherwise firm wall, hidden from sight by more of the rubbery mass. "And I think we have a winner."

As she continued to clean and check, she found several more perforations, each of them large enough in diameter to slide a finger through. Under magnification, it was clear that the damage had been done from the inside out, as if something had pushed its way through the aortal walls from inside the blood stream.

"Convenient and not particularly elaborate," Izzy declared as she finished dictating her results. "Which it didn't have to be. This was very efficient without requiring a lot of energy."

"You sound like you approve." Sophie's voice was low.

Izzy favored her with a probing look. "Of killing those taken prisoner so they can't tell us anything? No. But I appreciate that we now know we are dealing with someone who is sufficiently professional to not waste energy and to place his traps to the point and for greatest effect. It tells us to be extra-careful. Forewarned is good."

Wiping her gloves before pulling them off, she swapped them for clean ones before she had Clary give her the camera and took pictures of the damaged organ from all angles. She carefully placed it in another stasis container and labeled it before returning to the heart.

"I think the spell was anchored here." She used a thin tool to point, showing the other two women what looked like a slight furrow through the tissue right where the large blood vessel had been connected. "And it exploded upwards and outwards." Another photograph was taken before she proceeded to measure and weigh the heart, recording everything with the same care that she had used on the brain.

Though she was sure she had found all there was to find already, Izzy refused to be rushed. She continued her work, slowly emptying out the corpse's chest cavity, followed by its abdomen, showing Clary every organ and pointing out the differences from their own bodies.

From the frantic way in which Sophie was taking notes, some of the things she told her friend were new for the trainee as well.

"How long have you been training here?" Izzy asked her when she was closing up the skin flaps she had folded aside once again.

"Three months," Sophie said. "But I don't think I've ever seen anyone go about it this… thoroughly."

"My teacher was all for thorough," Izzy told her. "She always said that finding things equals missing things. Meaning that if you're too happy you found something, you're likely to forget there may be secondary aspects you should also take into account. I never stop after the first finding." She pulled off her gloves and snatched up a rectangle of white cloth waiting folded on the counter she had placed the stasis containers on to cover the corpse with it. "Besides, it would have been a waste of an opportunity. Clary's never seen a Seelie from the inside before."

"I'm not sure I managed to write down everything," Sophie admitted. "I'm not sure I _knew_ all of what you told her."

Izzy could see her problem with that. If Sophie's report had too many holes, her teacher would not be happy. "When do you get off?"

"What?" She looked at the clock mounted on one of the walls. "Twenty minutes ago, in theory."

"Do you have places to be?"

Sophie shook her head. "Home, trying to write that report." She sounded a little subdued. "I think I better get some book on Seelie anatomy first to make sure I don't get anything wrong."

"Tell you what?" Izzy said brightly. "Why don't you just come with us, join us for lunch, and then we write our reports together. How does that sound?"

The younger woman didn't seem quite certain of that. Her nod was reluctant, as if she expected that she'd be told not to be silly and just go and do it on her own any moment.

"Great." Izzy tossed her used gloves into the waste bin and watched as Clary followed her example. "Say, do they still have the museum down below?"


	22. Chapter 22

The "museum" was a series of rooms filled with preserved exhibits, some of them dating several hundred years into the past.

"Why is this kept in the lab's basement?" Clary asked as Sophie swiped her stele over the door lock to let them in.

Izzy didn't know if her stele would have unlocked it, but with the trainee accompanying them, she didn't have to find out about it either. Anyone working or studying in the lab was free to come down here.

"Because it's not meant for the public," she told her friend. "Some of the exhibits you'll see in a moment are very old, and if you let masses of people come through, someone is going to come up with something stupid sooner or later, and cause damage to one thing or another. They're meant for research purposes, not for people to enjoy their creepiness." Besides, some of them were maybe a bit too creepy for public consumption.

Izzy felt herself smile when she entered. She had spent many hours down here when she had come to the lab for training herself. Most new trainees lost interest in it quickly, which made it a quiet place in which one could study in peace – and go and check out the actual 3D-models of whatever one was currently reading about much of the time.

They walked past the first set of displays, exhibiting a variety of warlock marks.

This was the part that made Izzy shudder involuntarily every time. She'd never been able to ascertain that all of these had been taken from the dead. She knew there were people who had hunted warlocks for their marks in the past, taking them and leaving the rest of the warlock alive.

Sometimes, if the mark had been something conspicuous but not particularly vital, maybe that even improved the warlock's lot among the mundanes. Most times, it probably led to a slow and painful death.

The next cases were more scientific in nature, displaying preserved organs and comparing those of various types of Seelie to those of mundanes and Nephilim – the latter standing out in particular by their better development that was attributed as much to the constant training from a young age as the angel blood running in their veins.

There was a section dedicated to demonic substances, with a very few actual demonic tissues preserved under heavy spellwork to keep them from following the demons they belonged to into banishment out of their current plane of existence.

Clary did blanch a little when she looked at preserved stripes of skin that had been exposed to demon venom, showing the precise effect of that caustic substance.

Further on, there was the jaw of a vampire, complete with a drawing that showed how the fangs would slide in and out at need.

It was the last room, however, that held both the most terrible and the most fascinating exhibits: These cases contained complete specimen of various creatures, posed and arranged. They were masterpieces of taxidermy, the oldest one that of a Seelie in full armor.

Clary moved a little closer to Isabelle. "Tell me these are wax models?" she said in a low voice.

Izzy shook her head. "They aren't.  I can tell you we no longer produce any of these, though. The youngest ones are about two hundred and fifty years old." She pointed at a group of werewolves, two in their complete wolf shape, the other two half-transformed.

"What's this one?" Clary asked. She was squinting at the labels, trying to make sense of the text, but finding that the language eluded her. She could read the word "werewolf" and the year 1232, given in Roman numerals, but not much else. The exhibit didn't look like a werewolf.

"A werewolf mutation," Izzy said behind her. "Must not have been very successful, because we've never heard of it anywhere outside of this room, so either there only ever was this one or it died out."

The exhibit rivaled the regular werewolves they knew in size, but the general body shape looked as if someone had bred dog into the wolf. Not a lot of it, but enough to dilute the wolf features a little. The pelt was a reddish gold, far from any fur color they had ever seen on a live werewolf. In spite of the great age, its coat almost looked groomed, as if someone had frequently taken a brush to it in life, and the quality had been preserved in death.

"We call it the werewolf prince," Sophie said behind them. "Because of how regal it looks."

*

"Lunch first, reports later," Izzy said as the three of them entered the Lightwood house. "I'm starving."

"My stomach still isn't sure what it thinks of those exhibits," Clary muttered by her side, before ducking into the kitchen to say hello to Jace.

Isabelle almost laughed. "You watched me dig around in a corpse and took pictures of it," she said. "But the thing that gets to you is centuries-old taxidermy?"

"So nice of you to finally join us!" Alec's voice came from the dining room. "You're not the only one who's starving, Iz!"

Now she did laugh. "Go on in," she told Sophie. "I'll just put my things away quickly and join you in a moment."

Following the voice, Sophie found herself face to face with a very tall, very handsome young man who couldn't have denied his relationship with Isabelle if he'd tried.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Sophie Foxhunter. You must be Jace - Izzy's brother?"

His eyebrows went up a little, and he seemed amused, but not in a mocking way. "Actually, I'm Alec," he said. "The oldest." Then, raising his voice, he called: "Jace? Are you about done over there? I think Izzy's guest wanted to meet you - not me."

"I didn't have a preference," she said. "I didn't know she had more than one brother. She just talked about Jace because the Seelie she dissected was wounded by him…" Realizing that she was babbling, she clamped her lips shut.

"It's okay," Alec said, clearly amused and just as clearly trying not to let it show too much. "There comes Jace."

Sophie turned, expecting to see another handsome black-haired man – possibly a younger copy of Alec.

Well, handsome he certainly was. That was where similarities ended, because Jace was as blond as Alec was dark-haired, and while everything about Alec spoke of a trained fighter…

"Oh my! Did you hurt your leg in the battle with the Seelies and the demons?" Sophie blurted out before she could stop herself.

Jace glanced down at her words. "No, I just didn't bother to sort my feet right now."

As he reached to put his feet onto the foot rest of his wheelchair properly by pulling his legs in place by the fabric of his jeans, she realized that he wasn't injured – at least not recently. He had no control over his legs. That couldn't be—

"You're not the Jace who beat up the Seelie," she said, once again speaking too fast for her brain to intervene.

"I didn't _beat up_ any Seelie," Jace said, moving aside to let Clary into the room with a tray. The table was already laid for five people. "I just knocked him out with the hilt of my knife. One of my knives. None of which I've gotten back yet from Heidelberg."

"But you're—you can't—" She wasn't sure how to put it without insulting him.

"Careful," Alec's voice sounded behind her, half-amused and half-trying for a calming tone. "Keep going and he'll challenge you to a training fight. And unless you are very, very good, he'll win."

Jace took his place at the table, pouring drinks for himself and Clary. It was impossible to mis-interpret the looks that passed between those two.

"No, I'm not usually going in the field like this." Jace said, glancing back over at Sophie. "But if I happen to be out and we happen to be attacked, I can mostly hold my own. That's important if you don't want to be stuck in Alicante forever."

That was when Izzy arrived, having not only dropped off her things but also taken a moment to quickly change into something that wasn't smelling of the lab. Going by the look Clary gave her, she was currently regretting that she hadn't done the same.

"I thought you were hungry," Izzy said as she unceremoniously slid into her seat at the table. "So why are you still all standing around?"

They followed her example quickly enough.

Throughout the meal, Sophie found her attention wandering to Jace. Something about the man kept tickling her memory, but the precise details evaded her.

It wasn't until dessert came around – announced to her as the most delicious Canadian pie to be found in Alicante and entirely living up to any expectations raised by that – that she made the connection.

It must have shown on her face, because Jace sighed almost immediately. "Spill it," he told her, not in an unfriendly tone, but it was clear that his patience was wearing thin.

"You're not Izzy's brother at all!" she told him. "You're the Herondale heir! You were all over the newspapers a few months ago. Linnie – another one of the trainees – has a whole folder of them. She cut them all out and kept them because she thought you're so cute. She's been daydreaming about meeting you all this time… I think she has a crush on you – or well, your photographs. But you're – you weren't—"

"I took an arrow in the back last month," Jace said. "And your friend Linnie is going to have to discuss _that_ one with Clary. But I _am_ Izzy's brother in every way that counts other than blood. Herondale's just a name, and not the one I would have chosen for myself. Especially not if it gets my picture in the paper and makes me end up with a gaggle of fangirls."

"Weird," Alec mused. "I always thought you'd be the one who'd enjoy having a gaggle of fangirls."

*

Jace was sitting on the edge of the pool, watching as the water hit his skin.

Somewhere during their reiteration of their visit to Heidelberg – the entire thing, not just the attack that had ended it – for their friends, he had mentioned the additional training recommendation.

Aline's face had lit up immediately as she'd pointed out that the Penhallow family did have a heated pool on their premises. She'd followed that one up with an invitation to all of them to use it if they liked.

They'd known about the pool, of course, though asking if they could use it had never crossed their minds before. Now that the offer had been made, they had all felt the urge to make use of it at the first opportunity.

In the end, they had packed up their things and relocated.

Jace thought that he might have preferred less of an audience for the first attempt, but he had to admit that no one was paying him much attention: Alec had taken possession of the opposite lane almost immediately, determined to beat the times Aline's mother had written down for herself while Aline handled the stopwatch, and Izzy was already busy improving Clary's technique for faster speed and better endurance.

Doubtlessly, they were mostly giving him time to figure things out, which Jace appreciated. He just hoped he wasn't going to sink like a stone as soon as he pushed himself in.

Well, there were enough people there to pull him out if that was the case.

He kept one hand on the edge as he slid into the water, mentally scolding himself for it immediately. Water carried a person. He could just lie on it and float without any risk of sinking.

That, of course, wasn't the idea behind this exercise.

He noticed the lift of the water as soon as he let go and tried a careful stroke, as it lifted the part of his body that wasn't helping him get anywhere. He felt out of balance, the tilt to his upper body wrong, as if his legs were coming up too far.

Which, logically speaking, wasn't even possible.

Still, he had to glance behind a few times to make sure.

He wasn't going to sink and drown, he reminded himself. The one thing he didn't know was how fast he was going to be able to swim with only his arms to propel him forward – and that he wouldn't find out while paddling along the edge, trying to convince himself that what he was doing was perfectly safe.

A glance to his side showed him that Alec had disappeared from the opposite lane.

He was still wondering where he'd gone when that question solved itself, as a large shape shot through the water to surface close to Jace.

Shaking water from his face and spraying Jace with it, his _parabatai_ gave him a challenging grin. "How many lanes do you think I can do for every one of yours?" He asked.

Jace considered only a moment. "One way to find out!"

Oh yes – a distraction was exactly what he needed.

*

_December 8 th, 2016_

Imogen had stood by the side of the paddock for a while, watching Alec and Jace, with her back turned to Clary and Izzy in the larger ring. That was just as well, Jace thought. Clary had gained in confidence, but his grandmother's scrutinizing looks were enough to make him wonder if his performance on the horse was coming even close to meeting her standards.

Given their uninvited watcher, they were putting their horses through more formal exercise than they usually would have.

He could ride a clean shoulder-in and even managed a decent half-pass just with reins and shifting his seat. The normally easier leg-yield required one hand on his outside thigh, which made fiddling with the reins in his other hand a bit tricky.

He was sweating more than Crusader did when he finally treated himself to a canter around the paddock, interrupted by a pass through the diagonal with periodic changes of leg – something his horse was nice enough to accomplish simply based on the way he was balancing, rather than demanding proper leg-aids for it. That surely would have required letting go of the reins altogether, which was not an option while Imogen was looking on.

Slowing to a trot, he turned down the center line, where he let Crusader fall into a walk until they stopped, accurately, where the center of the ring would have been if the paddock had been a ring.

After holding the position for a few beats, just long enough to make clear that they were moving again because he said so and not because Crusader had lost interesting in standing, he steered her over to where Imogen was waiting.

"You are an excellent rider," she told him, the praise warming her voice.

"Haven't your spies told you as much?" Jace asked, but his words lacked the edge they would have held as much as half a week ago.

He could see a muscle in her face twitch. At least she wasn't denying it. He'd been almost certain that he'd spotted some of her entourage here and there when they'd been out.

"They have," she admitted. "Seeing it with my own eyes is different."

"At least they're honest," Jace muttered. He let Crusader walk to the gate and opened it. He barely needed to do any work for that – his horse knew the motions, and went through them willingly.

Alec followed, waiting without offering help, and merely nodding to Jace's grandmother politely on the way.

Imogen walked alongside as Jace rode Crusader to where he had parked his chair.

She watched him dismount with interest, waiting until he had settled and picked up Crusader's reins to lead her to where he could unsaddle her and brush her down. The horse had learned to stay back far enough to not constantly walk into the wheelchair, and didn't seem to find anything odd about the arrangement anymore at all.

Jace worked in silence, unwilling to betray to his grandmother just how much her presence did bother him.

"Your commendation went through," Imogen said eventually.

He looked up at her through the hair falling into his eyes. "My commendation?"

"For saving the Inquisitor's life."

Jace's eyebrows went up a little. "Am I the only one getting a commendation?" he asked. "Because if so, I don't want it."

The look she gave him was impossible to misunderstand. She wasn't happy about his statement.

"You certainly are loyal to your friends," she said. "Even at your own detriment?"

He gave a one-sided shrug. "We're a team. Alec is our leader. If you're going to single me out, I will refuse it. Yes, even from you." Especially from her.

Imogen sighed.

"Tatyana Redwood," she said.

"What?" He had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He was sure he'd never heard that name before. "Who's that?"

"The name you wanted. Nicholas Nightshade's last victim. The one who lived. I don't expect it'll help you much, because as far as I know she's never talked to anyone about what happened, and she's unlikely to start now."

He had pulled the saddle onto his lap and turned to hoist it onto the fence where it could wait for him to put it away. "Why are you telling me now?"

"Because you wanted to know it before, and I've promised to not stand in your way any longer," she said. "Any of your ways. I do expect you to accept that commendation, though. Gracefully. All four of you."

"You need to talk to Alec about that." Jace had picked up a brush and started working on Crusader's coat with it. "He's still our leader. I'll follow his lead."

Reaching out with one hand, Imogen ran it through Crusader's mane. Jace wondered if she was petting his horse as a stand-in for pampering him now.

"You _are_ a Herondale," Imogen said. "You should lead. You could run an Institute … as you are."

"Been there, done that," Jace said. "Didn't work out so well. I'm a soldier at heart. I follow. I can do logistics and plan, but I'm not good at the big decisions. It'd be a waste to put me in that position again, when we have someone we already know is much better at it than I."

"Herondales have always led," his grandmother told him, clearly trying for a reasonable tone.

Jace counted to ten and realized that it didn't help. "I can look into changing my name to Lightwood if you prefer," he said the precise thing he had tried to avoid blurting out. "I've gone through so many names in these last three months, no one's going to notice anyway."

He didn't need to look at her to know the shocked impression that brought to her face.

"You really are serious about this," she noted after a few moments of silence.

Now he did turn to look at her. "Yeah. What did you think? That I was saying it just to spite you?" He held her eyes, unwilling to be the first to look away.

Imogen swallowed visibly. Then she gave an almost imperceptible nod. "I'll go and talk to your commander about that commendation then."

*

"You told her you'd change your name to Lightwood?" The effort Alec made to keep a straight face was comical enough that Jace needed to look away from him to refrain from laughing.

"I meant it, too," he said. "Would you mind? If I called myself Lightwood?"

Alec shook his head. "You're my _parabatai_. You have every right to call yourself Lightwood anytime you like. Herondale's going to open more doors for you, though."

Jace gave him a grin. "You're my _parabatai_. You have every right to call yourself Herondale anytime you like," he said. "I don't really care about the name one way or the other, but I'm not going to live her dream or the life she planned for the father I never knew. I assume we will have to accept that commendation?"

Alec favored him with the sternest look he could muster. "Oh yes," he said. "We will have to accept that commendation. Graciously. Wearing our best outfits and if we're particularly unlucky with an interview to follow so there can be more photographs of you in the newspaper for people like Sophie's friend Linnie to cut out and put over their beds."

Clary made a gagging sound, while Isabelle laughed out loud.

"I don't think she said anything about putting them over her bed," she said.

"I don't care where she puts them," Jace muttered. "But maybe she'll decide Alec's the better-looking one of us anyway. Besides which, _I_ will have my girlfriend in the picture." He stopped, taking a moment to wipe his hands on his jeans. "I hate snow."

"If you do that with your dress pants, someone is going to be very displeased," Alec noted.

"Several someones," Clary corrected.

Jace glared at each of them in turn. "Make them shift their commendation to a different season then," he suggested. "One that's warm and dry and—" he broke off. "Let me try something."

Turning first to one side and then the other, he sketched tiny designs onto the rims on either wheel, then turned them a little way and repeated the process until he was once around them.

When he gripped the metal firmly again, he could feel the heat radiating from it – not unpleasant by any length. Quite the opposite – it was a comfortable change for his clammy fingers. "Much better," he said, satisfaction clear in his voice. "I should have thought of that right away."

They moved on, and he savored the fact that he was no longer feeling like his hands were going to freeze off before he was home. "I guess I better make them runes when we're back, though," he noted. "Or at least make them look like runes. People will wonder otherwise…"

*

_December 9 th, 2016_

"There's only one Redwood family," Alec announced. He'd taken the new information Imogen had given them to the library and run it through the Nephilim database from there. "And I have found Tatyana."

He put the printouts on the table before them.

"No wonder you didn't find her before," Izzy said as she scanned the page. "She's listed as active."

Alec nodded. "Oddly so." His finger tapped the page. "No field postings given, current or prior. How can she be active but not be posted anywhere?"

"A mistake in the entry?" Clary suggested.

"Deliberately making it harder to find her? A dummy profile and she's actually working under a different name to avoid the publicity?" Jace added. "If these dates are right, she was seventeen when the Nightshade thing went down. Thirty now. She may very well have married and taken another name since. Maybe this was kept just to deter superficial searches for her to give her a break."

"In which case your grandmother's 'help' really is only a token effort," Alec noted. He pulled out the sheet that gave Tatyana Redwood's known assignments and placed it on top of the pages on the table. "Her last assignment was with the Inquisitor's office. If she was still there, that alone would protect her."

"If she's still there and all grandmother did was toss us a name, I'd not be amused," Jace said.

Clary looked confused. "What would being with the Inquisitor's office protect her from?"

"People bothering her just because they're curious?" Alec's statement sounded almost like a question. "The Inquisitor mainly investigates crimes committed by Nephilim. People don't usually go out of their way to annoy those working there."

"Oh," Clary said, understanding dawning on her face. "Like IA."

"IA?" Now it was the other three's turn to be confused.

"Internal Affairs. Police officers who investigate other police officers. Like the guy who bothered Luke around the time we first met."

Alec had only a very vague idea of what had happened then, but from what he had gathered, it came about as close as it could, being part of the mundane world. "Kind of like that," he confirmed.

"Wait." Clary frowned at the thought. "Why'd he pick her? It seems like one of the worst choices you can make where victims are concerned."

"Who knows what was going on in his mind?" Alec glanced at his notes once again, though he knew perfectly well what they said. "We have so little information on what he actually did and what kind of victims he chose that it could really be anything. Maybe he didn't think that far. Maybe she fit whatever pattern he had, or thought he had. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Maybe she was just in the right place at the right time," Izzy said, picking up on the idea her friend had started to probe. "They had eight dead already. Maybe she got a lead on him or tried to apprehend him alone, and he grabbed her."

Teasing a fresh piece of paper and a pen from their supplies, Alec gave his friends a long look, checking if any of them would object to his next words. "Speculation won't get us anywhere. Let's write to the Redwoods we have and ask them if they can get us into contact with Tatyana. Then we'll take it from there."

*

_December 10 th, 2016_

The answer they'd received the day before had been short and to the point. Tatyana Redwood was not available to answer any questions they might have. They were asked to refrain from contacting the family again.

Fire messages may not have conveyed tone of voice any better than text messages did, but that one had definitely read as only barely polite.

Remembering Alec's promise to Aline, they filed the matter under "dead ends" for the time being and focused on what remained of their other leads.

They were running out of those quickly now. After David's revelations about the founding of the Silent Brothers, the journal only contained random entries so far, telling of the beginning construction of the Silent City, with the cave system under Alicante as a base. The entries were spaced far apart, with months or even years between them. Context was missing entirely now, but somehow, losing his normal eyesight and replacing it with whatever the runes gave him had made David's handwriting neater.

Jace put down the next date, and found himself turning back to the last page, checking the one given before that. If the entries were dated correctly, there was a gap of nearly three hundred years between the last one and this.

 _It is fitting that this journal is coming to an end_ , he wrote. _For so am I. More and more, I find the concept of continuing to exist tiresome to the point of being unbearable. I understand now the habit of ancient warlocks of withdrawing from the world and giving up their lives. I plan to do the same. I believe that I have found the runes that will put me into a sleep that is the closest thing I can achieve to death while honoring the promise that I will not take my own life._

_I wonder what she is doing, the woman who was once my wife. More than Nephilim herself now, following me in her own way, never knowing what it was that made me reject her and our bond._

_It has been a long time since I have thought of her. I do not regret it. She is beyond my reach, by my own decision and by hers. But I feel that I have failed her, leaving her in the way I did. I can only hope that she did better when she set out on her own path._

_It has been a long time since_ that _day has haunted me. I have gone decades without thinking of it. Yet ever since I made my decision, the memory has returned to me, clear as ever, overcoming me in moments when my focus should be on other, more imminent things._

_I shall finish this last entry, and then send this book to her, warded with the best spells I can find lest those who must not know what I have seen gain knowledge that would be their doom. It will be for her eyes only to decipher, and I am anchoring the protections in the vellum I am writing on even as I am putting down the words._

_Maybe you already know what I am going to tell you,_ he continued, addressing his reader directly now.

Jace was frowning deeply at the book. Nothing he had ever read anywhere had suggested that David the Silent had been married before he had taken his vows as a Silent Brother.

Of course, all the old Shadowhunter families had family legends of having one of the three first Nephilim as their ancestors, but that was all it was: Legends. There were no records going back that far. No one could know for certain if they were descended from one of the three. The official stance was that none of them had procreated, since they had dedicated their lives entirely to their newfound destiny. Personally, Jace had always found that one a little far-fetched.

He returned his attention to the book.

_If you do not, think well about whether you want to understand the reasons for my decision._

Jace rolled his eyes. For some reason, David had believed that knowing what he knew – what the Silent Brothers all knew, apparently – would be a death sentence for any ordinary Nephilim. If he expected his ex-wife to still be alive after all these centuries, she must have joined Abigail when she had founded the Iron Sisters, possibly as one of those first six who had gone with her.

Maybe, he thought, he was reading too much into this. Maybe it was merely that David had started to go senile in his high age, forgetting that the woman he was writing to was long dead.

The wards and protections he was speaking of certainly had worn off or been removed in the meantime.

He turned the page, and it was probably his newfound knowledge of those wards that made the letters seem to shift for a moment, weaving and trembling until they steadied into the clear print he had found all throughout the second section of the book, and only copied out to spare the ancient vellum and leather the stress of being handled by everyone in turn.

_It was the screams that drew me. They should have given me runes to close my ears as well, for I can still hear those screams today if I think of them. I never knew that any living creature could make such sounds._

_I expected demonwork. What else could cause that amount of pain? You know that I was never much of a fighter, but that day I took my sword and I hurried towards them, knowing that I could not leave whatever poor creature was suffering so without help, and that going for reinforcements would surely be too long and only prolong the agony._

_When I reached the cave, I did not understand what I was seeing at first. At first, all that my eyes would see, all that my brain would understand, was the blood. The blood was everywhere, and the dimness of the cave concealed its true nature from me until the smell hit me._

_The blood was pooling on the stone floor, seeping into every crevice in the rock, hissing where it hit a clump of grass that had grown into the shade of the overhang, rooted in some dirt-filled crack. I still shy back from calling it anything other than blood, though I know fully well that it was not._

_The figures in the cave resolved only slowly into something comprehensible. It was as if my mind refused to accept what it was seeing. There was the creature, bound by marks I thought for sure must be demonic runes, barely recognizable as anything alive, still writhing in agony. I do not know what it was. I do not know what its face looked like._

_It no longer had anything worthy of that description. Dark pools of glistening wetness where its eyes must have been, the shapes of runes cut deeply into its features and obscuring anything it might once have been identified by._

_The blood_ – the ichor – _was flowing from other parts of that body as well, and I did not want to think about the shapeless lumps tossed carelessly aside._

 _The_ others – _the three larger figures, standing up, going about their work of dissecting their helpless victim even farther, remained blurred before my eyes, as if they did not wish to be seen and by the mere token of that prevented clear sight from happening._

_I could hear them whisper, their voices a singsong not matching their gruesome work in its beauty. They were urgent, those whispers, demanding. The language was not one I understood, but somehow I understood that they were demanding answers: Answers their victim could no longer give, for all that emerged when it opened its mouth were inarticulate sounds and more ichor._

_I was frozen in place by my fear, wanting to rush forward, and wanting to run away at the same time. The thing before me was beyond rescuing. Putting it out of its misery would leave me in the hands of its tormenters, but how would I live with myself if I snuck away now?_

_Then one of them turned, and it fixed me with a stare so bright that it drowned out everything else. It knew that I was there, had known it all along maybe. The power of its mind held me in place, and I wished, more than I have ever wished for anything else, that its shape had remained the undefined form it had been a moment ago._

_Or that it had resolved into anything – anything other than the image of radiant beauty I saw before me, so out of keeping with the cold expression in those golden eyes. Anything other than the pair of shining wings, impossibly white in light of the messy work the creature was doing. Fully extended, they brushed the ceiling of the cave as well as the floor, feathers dragging in the pools of ichor without taking a stain._

_My mind was not so impervious. It has borne the stain it acquired that day ever since. I could no longer move. I could not shut my eyes to close out the sight. I stood, bound, watching them complete their slaughter, inch by inch, until the wails ceased and the victim's body gave out._

_The last pieces fell into place when its body crumbled into the black ashes I have felt under my own fingers so often. Whatever I had told myself before, whatever I may have been able to make myself believe otherwise: I had seen, and heard, and pitied a demon bound, and tortured, and banished in the slowest way imaginable. The motions of those three with their shining blades had held no anger. They'd been calm, controlled, contemplative even. What I had seen was half interrogation and half ritual sacrifice: A demon sacrifice. A demon sacrificed by angels._

_I have questioned many things since that day, but I have no doubt of this:_

_They belong in our world no more than the demons do._

_They have dazzled us with their beauty and their promises and their gifts._

_They have made us their tools._

_God help us all._


	23. Chapter 23

"I want to believe that whatever he actually saw caused him to lose his mind and this is mostly his imagination speaking," Alec said when he put down the last page. Though the room was pleasantly warm, a fire burning in the open hearth and Magnus nestled against his side, he felt chilled. "But I can't."

Magnus' arm around him tightened, drawing him closer and offering comfort, though he himself looked as if he was in some need of the same.

"May I see the book?" Magnus asked.

"Yeah, sure." Jace handed it to him across the table.

They all watched as the warlock opened it to the first page, with the utmost reverence and care for the ancient material, browsing the writing.

He turned the pages, with Alec watching over his shoulder.

Alec saw what Jace had meant about the writing changing after David had become a Silent Brother. The hard-to-decypher cursive turned into a clear print in the latter part of the book, the only difficulty in reading now the old language that he had never given up using.

Magnus, however, was frowning.

"Can you read this?" he asked, looking at Alec.

"Yeah," Alec said. "The style is terrible, but whatever method he used to put the words down here was a really good idea."

"Mm-hm," Magnus said, moving on through the book, then back again. "So, as far as I am concerned, everything from here onwards is gibberish."

"You're kidding." Alec tried to find any indication in Magnus' face that his boyfriend was having him on, but could spot nothing. Magnus' eyes were as sincere as they ever were.

He looked back at the book. "The protections are wearing thin," he read out. "When I had Jonathan first inscribe the new runes on my face… This reads just fine."

Izzy held out a hand, and he gave her the book. She frowned in concentration as she puzzled out some of the text on the first pages, then turned towards the end. "Neat print back here," she announced. "I don't think this was even written with a pen." She peered at the writing close-up, sketched a magnifying charm on her eyelids and looked again. "The lines are much too even for regular ink. There's zero bleeding… He won't have put this through a printing press, so I suspect he's imprinted the text directly from his mind somehow, similar to how Magnus makes his memory photos."

She handed the book on to Clary with one hand while wiping off the charms with the other.

"I can confirm the technical aspects," Clary announced after a moment. "I can… read the words, but I don't understand what most of them mean. But I suspect that's a language problem, not a text problem."

The book went back to Magnus, who studied the letters once more, holding the volume close to his face. "To be honest, I can't even tell you what his pen strokes look like," he said. "These just keep shifting and turning… there's no way I can read anything of this."

"Interesting." Alec snatched the book away from him again. "So whatever wards he put on the book keep the text safe from being read by someone who's not Nephilim?"

Magnus blinked. "That seems rash, as conclusions go. It might be specifically against warlocks. Or demon blood. Or maybe it allows the four of you to read it because you are the ones who rescued it."

"Nope," Jace objected to the latter. "I wasn't there, and I can definitely read it."

"True," Magnus agreed. "But there are still many other possible reasons. What are you doing?"

Alec had taken out his phone and was angling it at the book. "Taking a picture," he said.

"What for?"

"I want to know if the wards are on the text or on the book." Pulling up the picture, he enlarged it with two fingers on the screen and showed it to Magnus.

"I see," Magnus said. "Now _this_ I can read." He seemed amused by the idea. "Lucky thing David didn't have any concept of cameras yet. The wards must be directly in the paper."

"This still leaves us with the issue of what we'll do with this information." Alec snapped the book shut and pushed it back to Jace. "I'm not sure if David was right in assuming that sharing this knowledge would be a death sentence for any Nephilim, but I can see that this is explosive material."

"Explosive?" Izzy asked. "I'm not sure I've fully processed it yet myself, but letting this get out would be a disaster. The implications are… worse."

Alec raised his eyebrows at her. "Worse than what?"

"Worse than anything we might imagine, probably."

They were spared having to continue that line of conversation, which could only have led to wild speculation, by the arrival of a fire message that dropped regally into Alec's automatically raised hand.

He scanned the lines before putting the page on the table for everyone to read.

"We've been summoned," he announced. "Conclave meeting tomorrow. Did everyone bring a set of formal clothes?"

*

_December 11 th, 2016_

"No, Alec," Jace told his _parabatai_ , his voice firm and demanding. "Absolutely not! You're not leaving the house like that."

Alec took a step back and spread his arms. "What's wrong with this?" He was dressed all in black, as was Jace. Both had chosen the most formal outfits they had found among their things. Clary had opted for dress pants and a dark blue blouse as well, supplemented with a jacket borrowed from Izzy, who wore a dress that, as she had complained, made her look like her own mother.

Clary had been quick to point out that actually, there was nothing wrong with looking like a younger version of Maryse Lightwood.

"I had to promise Magnus to not let you wear combat boots with dress pants again," Jace declared. "So go and put on some different shoes. I don't want to get into any trouble with your boyfriend."

"Oops," Alec said, glancing down. "These are comfortable, though."

"You're not supposed to be comfortable, big brother," Izzy told him. She tried snapping her whip onto her arm on top of her sleeve, checked her appearance in the mirror and decided to carry it concealed beneath instead. Her stele was in a hidden forearm sheath on the other arm.

Clary, wearing mundane clothes, had chosen the same solution, while Alec carried his stele in a designated pocket in his dress pants. Jace had found that pocket impossible to use, since having his stele there kept pulling at the fabric while he was sitting down, leading to a strange-looking effect that he decided he absolutely did not need on any photographs Sophie's friend or anyone else might be keeping. His stele had gone into his breast pocket instead, easily accessible and somewhat inconspicuous.

"We should have asked Inquisitor Herondale for a coach." Alec had swapped his footwear and was shifting back and forth on his feet. It was clear that the dress shoes weren't to his liking at all. "My feet are going to kill me by the time we come back from the Gard. They'll also be frozen solid."

Jace bit his lip to keep from laughing, though the comical expression on his face made the two women look away for a moment to collect themselves.

"Alec, much as I love feeling the echo of your feet right now, I don't think I want to spend all day with your misery before my eyes," he declared after another moment. "I need to take stuff anyway in case it runs late – which it will, as we all know – so how about a deal?"

"What deal?" There was a hint of suspicion in Alec's voice.

"I'll let you put your dress shoes in my bag and carry them over, and keep your boots once we're there, and in return you come with me when I need to step outside and stand guard for me. I've yet to find a public restroom in Alicante that's large enough so I can close the damned door."

He'd been surprised to find that Heidelberg had restrooms marked with a wheelchair symbol that actually turned out to be not only spacious inside, but had additional equipment installed that made it easier to get out of the chair without touching anything he didn't want his bare hands on, as well as having a sink at a height he could comfortably reach. While mundanes usually weren't very practically inclined, they certainly had a big head-start in some areas.

"That's a deal," Alec said, slipping off the uncomfortable shoes and handing them to his friend quickly to step back into his boots. "And did Magnus really say that?"

*

In the past, when they had been forced one way or another to attend a Clave meeting, they had quickly let their attention drift, their minds on other things than the endless debates on meaningless topics, what discussion there was often circling without going anywhere.

Today, they listened and they watched.

By unspoken agreement, they paid attention to the camps forming, the groups supporting each other and those who seemed to oppose each other on principle. In particular, they paid attention to where Robert Lightwood belonged.

He had barely looked their way when they had come in to take their seats, a twitch in his face suggesting that he didn't appreciate seeing them in the Hall, but knowing there was nothing he could do about it. Even without being summoned, as adult Nephilim they had the right to attend Clave meetings whenever they felt like it.

Alec looked around, wondering if the woman Tatyana Redwood was somewhere among the attendants. Maybe if they caught her in person, she would talk to them after all. She hadn't even written or signed the refusal they'd received herself.

Aline's words came back to him. He'd promised not to bother her if she refused to talk to them. Was sending a refusal through a family member more or less restrictive than refusing in person?

It was entirely irrelevant, since they had no idea who they were looking for anyway.

Were there more people in attendance today than there had been the last times they'd gone to a meeting?

He wasn't sure. If there were, there still was no reason for them to be there on _their_ account. Maybe the entire fiasco with Valentine had raised people's interest in Clave affairs.

Maybe they were there because they could catch a glimpse of the Herondale heir. Alec wondered idly if anyone had approached Imogen with marriage proposals for Jace already.

Aline was sitting with her mother. She'd waved at them as they'd come in, and Jia Penhallow had given them a warm smile. She didn't oppose anyone on principle in the discussions, but seemed to come out opposite to Robert more often than not. She was being discussed for the position of Consul, and it wasn't hard to see she'd fill it better than Malachi had.

They sat through endless debates. By the letter of the law, every adult Nephilim had the right to speak. Too many insisted on that right.

First it felt like hours. Then it really was.

Even sitting down, Alec felt the shoes he wore so rarely that they would easily qualify as unused. He shifted uncomfortably, dropping one hand as he pulled up his foot a little and tried to unobtrusively get between his sock and his shoe with one finger to rub a particularly sore spot.

He saw Jace suppress a grin out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm doing this for you," he whispered, unheard by anyone else over the discussion. "So you won't forget what sore feet feel like."

Jace covered the lower portion of his face with the back of his hand, but his eyes were sparkling with amusement.

Robert gave them a glare across the room. Clearly, he'd been watching them and found the amusement – the reason of which he couldn't know – inappropriate.

The woman by his side was somewhat younger than he, with hair as curly and blonde as Maryse's was straight and black. Angel hair. Was that Margaret, the woman he claimed to love? Should someone warn her that she wasn't the first woman he loved, enough to abandon his marriage?

Finally, there was an announcement of a fifteen minute recess. Jace tapped Alec's arm as soon as the words fell.

"Time to keep up your part of the bargain. I want to be done before everyone else wants in."

They left, moving as silently as they could while the speaker was still giving the basics of where to find refreshments and when to be back.

*

Robert was waiting for them when they returned. He did not look pleased.

"Dad." Alec nodded at him as he held the door for Jace.

"Robert." Jace added, moving aside just far enough to not be in the way of other people coming back into the room, though the main stream was still going the other way.

As he saw his father scrutinize Jace, Alec realized that he hadn't been over once since that day of the pie and that he hadn't as much as sent a fire message to ask Jace how he was doing.

"This wasn't my idea," Robert said, his displeasure clear in his voice.

Alec felt a muscle in his face twitch in reaction. "I know," he said. "It was the idea of the Heidelberg Institute."

"What were you doing there in the first place?" Robert demanded. "You weren’t supposed to leave Alicante. Certainly not without permission!"

Alec's hands went behind his back as he stood up straighter. He was taller than his father. He didn't think he'd ever realized before that he could actually look down at the elder Lightwood when talking to him. "We went on Inquisitor Herondale's invitation and with her permission," he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. "I still haven't been summoned, so I don't assume one day's absence will have made a difference."

"Don't think that this little stunt you managed to pull there will get you out of the evaluation," Robert told him. "Victor Aldertree has sent me a very sharp letter about the entire affair. He has lodged an official complaint about your conduct."

"Was that before or after the commendation went through?" Jace asked, his tone one of polite interest.

Robert glared at him, but only briefly. "Before, obviously."

Alec could just about imagine Aldertree's reaction to the response, if he'd even received one.

"Then I guess someone disagreed," Jace returned.

"Probably because of the Herondale involvement." Robert's tone grew even colder "And because some people feel pity for you and wanted you to have that one last moment of glory."

"Careful," Alec said, his voice low, as he stepped closer to Jace. "That is out of line."

"Do not lecture me on what is out of line!" Noticing that his voice had gone up, Robert visibly reined himself in before he could draw too much attention. "Not when your conduct continues to bring disgrace to our family."

His son's voice was level as he answered, though anyone who knew Alec would have been able to tell the effort it cost him. "You mean the conduct that has led to a commendation for several Lightwoods?"

An inarticulate sound was all Robert had to spare for that. He turned back to Jace. "Why aren't you staying with your own family? I didn't want to believe it at first when I heard that you'd run away from Imogen."

"He _is_ staying with his family," Alec pointed out. An edge was creeping into his words.

"There's also a technical issue about the whole running thing," Jace added. "Or maybe I should say: a medical issue. In any case, I haven't done any running, away or towards anyone, for a while."

"Don't split hairs with me, Jace." Robert wasn't even looking at either of them now. He had half turned around to check if his companion was back in her seat already. "In any case, it's time you all had a little more supervision."

Alec could feel himself grow a few shades paler. If Robert planned to move in with them, they'd have to find a different place for their activities, and quickly. Well, they could use the Fairchild house. They'd certainly be busy enough fixing that up that they'd have good reason not to spend much time with their father…

The older man didn't even seem to notice it. "I have arranged for Maryse and Max to be recalled from New York. Max will require … other opportunities anyway."

His tone didn’t warm in the least, and for the first time, Alec found himself wondering if Robert would have preferred to start the attempt at perpetuating the Lightwood name all over again with his new woman.

At least sharing the house with their mother would be less of an issue. Alec wasn't sure if they could continue to bring in Magnus every night, especially with Max there, but they'd find a way to handle that. Maybe Clary could drop them off in the loft instead.

"She'll find no fault with our housekeeping," Alec promised. "We've been very orderly, I assure you. And if there are hairs stretched across drawers or doors, that's solely so we can tell if anyone broke in to play a prank on us, so we'd know to get the house better warded."

He had said it lightly, making it sound as much as a joke as he could. There was only the faintest reaction in Robert's face, and the only reason he saw it at all was that he had been watching for it.

"Get to your seats," Robert snapped, not gracing Alec's declaration with any direct answer. "We're about to recommence."

They didn't argue that, returning instead to take their places with Clary and Izzy.

As he sat, Alec spotted Sophie among the rows that were quickly filling up again. He raised a hand slightly to wave at her, acknowledging that he had seen her. She waved back.

Next to her sat a girl who looked to be thirteen or fourteen and had her eyes fixed on them. She hadn't mentioned a younger sister, but even if she had, Alec would have opted for Linnie if he'd been asked to hazard a guess.

Clary must have had the same thought, as she elbowed Jace slightly and indicated the two with a motion of her head. "Wave," she said. "Be nice to your fans."

Jace rolled his eyes at her, but he did send a smile and a wave towards Sophie and her friend, who seemed to suddenly find it very hard to not give a happy yelp.

"Yep," Izzy commented drily. "That must be Linnie."

Further conversation was cut short as the meeting was reopened with the next item on the agenda.

Crossing his arms, Alec forced himself not to fidget.

Minutes seemed to stretch into infinity until finally, finally they had reached the miscellaneous part of the agenda – which included time for official mentions of special services rendered.

Gloria Whitechapel took the stage, briefly outlining the activity Heidelberg had seen with the Seelie posse haunting downtown without giving anyone a legal reason to run them off; that they had brought in two demons under cover, planning who-knew-what on the Main Square, and giving her deepest gratitude to the four young Nephilim who had been there, off duty and on their own time, and stepped in before even a single mundane could come to harm. More than that – they had done it so discretely that the mundanes going about their business nearby had never realized there was anything amiss. She did not leave out the part where Jace's dagger had saved the Inquisitor, and Imogen, who had come to join her on the stage, somehow managed to smile and nod, adding her endorsement to the statement.

Listening to her, it sounded as if they'd single-handedly prevented a mass murder in downtown Heidelberg.

Alec blinked as, for the first time, the thought sunk in that possibly they had. Two demons of that size and a dozen Seelie bent on wreaking havoc?

"Clarissa Fairchild; Jonathan Herondale; Alexander Lightwood; Isabelle Lightwood: step forward," Whitechapel ended, and they moved, not quite keeping to the alphabetical order.

"She'll have to excuse if I'm not taking the stepping part literally," Jace said, loud enough for at least a few people around them to hear.

The other three bit their lips to avoid a reaction.

What followed was hardly worth the hours of waiting. There was some shaking of hands, both with Whitechapel and the Inquisitor, who handed each of them a document assuring them of the gratitude of the Heidelberg Institute for unusual services rendered and a moderate sum that went with such rewards. From the look Jace gave him, Alec could tell that he certainly didn't think it worth the effort of having two people help him onto the podium.

As they took their places in the front row again, Alec noticed that their father was not in his former seat.

It appeared that he had opted to leave, rather than watch his impertinent children be rewarded for their disobedience.

*

Knowing it would be hard for Jace to weave through the masses rushing for the exit once the last words had been spoken, the four of them stayed in their places, waiting for the flow to ebb.

Some people stopped briefly as they walked past them, exchanging a few words. Many didn't seem quite sure of what to say to Jace.

Sophie's friend had no such issues. The two made their way over, pushing through the crowd where they had to in order to reach them.

While Sophie approached Isabelle, her friend made a beeline for Jace.

"Hi!" she said brightly when he looked at her. "I'm Linnie, Sophie's friend. I've read _all_ about you!"

"That's … nice," Jace said slowly. "Also a little scary." He glanced towards Clary, who looked as if she was fighting a fit of helpless laughter.

"Scary?" Linnie asked. "But surely you're not scared of anything – or anyone! They wrote about all the missions you've been on! And now this one! Sophie told me what happened to you – they didn't write about that. But you won't let that stop you, right?"

Jace wondered what she thought he was going to do. Even she surely must realize that he was in no condition to go demon-hunting right now unless the demons came to him and took the decision out of his hands.

She didn't wait for an answer anyway.

"I saw you ride past my house! The red brick one with the weather vane that looks like a stele!"

Depending on quarter, that would have matched about every other building, Jace thought, but he nodded. While she was talking, he didn't have to say anything – which Clary was clearly waiting for him to do. He wanted to glare at her, but he was very much aware that that would send both of them into a fit of giggles.

"Your horse is so handsome! All golden and shiny!"

Jace refrained from pointing out that he knew what his horse looked like.

"Her name is Crusader," he said. "She likes carrots." He regretted that almost as soon as he had said it as he started to imagine Linnie dropping by the stables with sacks of the vegetable to treat his horse.

"How long have you had her? Is she trained special for you?"

He managed not to sigh. "I've had her for about ten years, and no. She's just a very good saddle horse. I can ride any horse that's not been spoiled by bad riders." He hadn't actually tried, but he was reasonably sure of it. "Say, have you met Clary?" He hooked a finger into Clary's sleeve and pulled her forward, glad that she allowed it and went along with the movement. "My fiancée."

That didn't deter her in the least. "How sweet!" she declared when Clary smiled at her, and then at Jace. "Did the Inquisitor arrange that?"

"What?" Jace couldn't help a perplexed expression. "No! We met in New York."

"Are you—" Linnie started her next question, but was interrupted as Alec put a hand on Jace's shoulder.

"Jace, Clary?" the other man said. "Can you interrupt that? You're needed over here."

"Sorry," he told Linnie, turning to find an older man had approached the Lightwoods. He had a notepad out and an angelic-power-camera over his shoulder. That made him wonder immediately if talking to Linnie some more wouldn't have been preferable.

"What did you need us for?" Jace asked the man, his tone guarded but polite.

"I'd like to have all four of you in a group picture for tomorrow's issue," the answer came immediately. "And I have a few questions."

This time, Jace did sigh. "Right. Take your picture then."

The reporter nodded eagerly. "Maybe one of your friends can help you onto a chair? We don't need _that_ in the picture. We'll manage without mentioning that."

Jace frowned. "No."

"No?"

"No," he repeated. "This is how I am right now. If you want to put my picture anywhere, this is how you show me. There's nothing that requires not to be mentioned."

He didn't know if that was going to deter some fans, which Linnie was proof that he had, but it was worth trying. Of course, Linnie was also living proof that it did not necessarily deter any fans.

Maybe it would at least deter people trying to convince Imogen to promise him to some girl or another! He'd never thought that that might happen, but of course marrying into the Herondale family was something a certain brand of people would consider desirable. He didn't want to have to ask Clary to rush a Shadowhunter marriage just to get rid of any such advances. They'd been going to take it slowly enough to determine exactly what kind of ceremony and celebration they wanted, to make the day absolutely perfect.

"You say 'right now'," the reporter said. "Is this a temporary condition?"

Jace shrugged. "The medics and the Silent Brothers say it's not."

"But Jace has extra angel blood," Clary declared in a tone so bright everyone who knew them would have recognized it as not being genuine. "He may still beat the odds."

"That," Jace agreed.

"How did it happen then?" the reporter asked. "People will want to know."

The two _parabatai_ exchanged a glance.

"We were on a mission," Alec began. "Taking out a demon hive…"

"I got too close," Jace continued quickly. "Thought I could reach it first, but all that happened was that it grabbed me and pulled me in. So the arrow that should have gone into its core hit me instead. Izzy killed the demon." He gave her a thankful smile. "So if anyone needs a reminder not to get cocky… if I'd stuck with the normal procedure, I'd have come out of it without a scratch."

Aldertree could call him a liar now, but if they were lucky, that variation of the story would go out tomorrow, accompanying the tale of how they had heroically saved Inquisitor Herondale from another demon. Maybe it would be the version people were going to remember.

"What will you do if your… your extra angel blood makes no difference?" The reporter started to arrange the other three around Jace. Clearly, he was already tweaking his story to accommodate the new information.

"I'll continue to train in every area I can and keep up every skill that doesn't require standing. I'm staying part of Alec's team and will take care of all the background work. There's a lot of work you can do from an institute without going into combat." Oh yes. If he had to talk to a reporter to begin with, he could just as well feed him all the plans everyone kept trying to talk them out of. He reached for Clary, linking his fingers through hers. There was something else the pictures could show unmistakably.

"Mr. Lightwood," the reporter said as he took the first picture. "Can you elaborate a little on just how you saved the Inquisitor?"

"No," Alec said. "I had my back to her. Jace did all the saving."

The reporter turned his attention back to Jace. "Mr. Herondale?"

"One of the Seelies grabbed me and I ended up knocking him out," Jace said. "When I looked up, the demon was standing over the Inquisitor, ready to pounce."

"He's forgetting to tell you that in between he took out another Seelie that was coming at me," Alec added, grinning. "He's amazing with throwing knives. Always has been."

"Yeah," Jace shot back. "And everyone always told me it wasn't a useful kind of weapon."

They rearranged themselves following the reporter's hand signs, with Clary moving closer and leaning against Jace and Alec folding his long frame into a crouch in the foreground, while Izzy remained standing by Jace's shoulder.

"Was there anything special going through your mind when you realized it was up to you to save the Inquisitor?" The reporter wanted to know as he snapped another series of pictures. "What were you thinking the moment you saw her and the demon?"

"Oh shit," Jace said, this time entirely truthfully.

He felt Izzy squeeze his shoulder slightly as Alec laughed. The reporter seemed less than happy with the information, but didn't challenge it.

There were a lot of pictures to take: The two _parabatai_ together, Clary and Izzy together, the Lightwood siblings together, Clary sitting on Jace's lap, separate shots of each of them and, finally, to top it all off, Jace with Linnie beaming by his side and Izzy shaking Sophie's hand as they stood in for someone congratulating them on their achievements. By the time they were done, they were alone in the hall.

"I'd like to take another set outside." The reporter announced then.

"Nope." Jace shook his head decisively. "We still need to get home, and I shouldn't be in the cold that long. Not in these thin things. I cool out too fast. It comes with the injury."

Disappointment was clear in the older man's face, but he didn't press. If he wondered why Alec was suddenly studying a corner of the ceiling very intently, he at least didn't bother to ask about it.


	24. Chapter 24

_December 12 th, 2016_

"He quoted you," Alec announced as he came in. He'd gone to get a newspaper so they could check out what the reporter had made of their interview the day before.

"Oh?" Jace asked. "What did I say?"

"Oh, shit," his _parabatai_ informed him. "But the pictures are pretty good."

They weren't too bad at least, Jace had to agree. The article contained a small portrait of each of them, giving their names and ages beneath. The main body of the text was arranged around a group picture and ended with two of the paired photos: Alec and Izzy in one, Jace and Clary in the other.

The text made them out a lot more heroic than any of them felt, but that was just as well.

An entire column detailed the story of Jace's injury and his determination to not let anything stop him from remaining active, and his friends' determination to support him in that decision.

 _'He's always been the best with throwing knives'_ , _his_ parabatai _and commander says_ \- _a skill he proved impressively by saving the life of his own grandmother, Inquisitor Imogen Herondale, with an incredible move. 'None of us could have made that throw.'_

"You never said that," Jace pointed out, but Alec shrugged it off.

"Reporters," he said. "We're lucky he didn't make up any more than that."

"We should send a copy of this to Aldertree." Izzy was grinning broadly at the thought. "I'd just love to see what he says when he reads it."

"We might not survive that." Alec took the cup of coffee Clary handed him and raised it to his lips to take a sip.

"Speaking of surviving." Izzy looked at each of them in turn. "Am I being very paranoid?"

She hadn't said about what, but the fact that none of the others needed to ask said more than any answer could have.

"Two unexpected demon attacks in a month," Alec said. "Both where we happened to be?"

Clary frowned at them. "You think we were set up the second time? That might be a bit too paranoid. They said the Seelie activity had been going on for a while already, and no one knew we were going to be there ahead of time. We only knew two days in advance."

"We were about the last to know," Jace told her. "Grandmother had called Heidelberg, arranged everything, booked the portals…There really are two things I'd like to know."

"Me, too," Alec said.

They shared a look.

"When was the first day Imogen told anyone about her plans to take us to Heidelberg?" Alec started.

"And when was the first time any unusual Seelie activity happened there," Jace added. "The thing is, we cannot just go and ask my grandmother. We don't know if we can trust her. For all we know, she helped set us up."

"She's your grandmother, Jace!" Clary objected. "She's been doing all kinds of annoying things to keep you safe!"

"Robert is Alec and Izzy's father," Jace pointed out coolly. "That doesn't make him trustworthy. And we haven't pie-tested my grandmother yet, and we can't really do that either – if we feed pie to the Inquisitor and it ends up making her sick…"

"Let's just remember we can't rule out that that encounter wasn't by chance." Alec took a long, slow sip of his coffee as he considered. "I hate that Dad is sending us Mom and Max. Max in particular. If we're in danger, anyone close to us might be, too."

"Well." Jace gave him a lopsided grin. "I'd say little brother needs to take up his combat training again once he arrives here. Whether he likes it or not. It's long past time for that anyway."

*

Izzy had brought the books on the Adamant Citadel downstairs with her, to read curled up in the living room armchair while Jace and Alec were busy transcribing more runes from their recordings and Clary had settled with another history book.

They worked and read in comfortable silence, interrupted only by occasional announcements of particularly interesting runes.

The two Nephilim books they had brought home from Heidelberg were not quite as old as David's journal. The publication date made them about fifty years younger than the last entry in that.

As it turned out, they were an introduction to the Iron Sisters and the Adamant Citadel, apparently targeted at Nephilim women who considered joining them. As such, they contained no secrets to add to their stash of unendorsed knowledge.

They were still an interesting read, albeit a slow one since many pages had acquired stains and tears. The clean-up charms the Gales used on their books helped some, but even the best charms were helpless where the print had been eaten away by coffee or mold, burn-holes or simply torn out by careless handling.

It didn't surprise her much to find that little had changed since she herself had read up on the Iron Sisters during that time she'd considered joining their order. They were said to be nearly as long-lived as the Silent Brothers, and thus predestined for perpetuating tradition much more closely than those with a shorter life cycle did.

Turning another page, Izzy took the time to study the illustrations on the spread in front of her. She'd seen this precise sectional view of the Adamant Citadel before in a modern book, labeled just as vaguely as the one she was looking at now. Still, the different designations of the areas did help to specify some information she had not previously had. For the first time, she considered that maybe reading various language versions of the same thing could produce more knowledge than each one did on its own.

There was another picture she kept coming back to: The outside view of the Citadel. When she and Clary had visited the place, they had portaled onto a barren mountain just below it and walked from there, passing through wards into a green park surrounding a magnificent structure.

No one other than the Iron Sisters and possibly the Silent Brothers knew where in the world precisely the Adamant Citadel was located, and all they'd been able to see from the place where they had arrived had been volcanic structures, telling them nothing about their precise whereabouts – never mind that Izzy herself had not been in any condition to focus on much of anything, since she'd been under the influence of _yin fen_ at the time. At least her excitement at coming to the Adamant Citadel had managed to clear her mind a little more.

Then she'd almost died in the purity trial, and she'd had no reason to try and figure out her precise location anyway…

From what she remembered, however, once they had reached the top of the mountain, everything outside of that park had been shrouded in a thick fog, making it impossible to recognize any distinguishing features of the world around the Citadel.

That was the case in every drawing she'd seen of the Citadel so far: The outward view did not exist.

This drawing was the first she had ever seen that showed the citadel with a background landscape of other mountain tops.

Were they born of the illustrator's imagination? Were they just random lines filled in because she hadn't liked a white background?

Or was this from before the misty wards had been placed, the formations suggested around the Citadel a hint to where the castle actually stood?

"Clary, is there a way to check the internet for whether there is a specific group of mountains anywhere?" She held up the picture and pointed. "Unless you remember seeing anything around the Citadel and can tell me it didn't look like this."

Looking over, Clary shook her head. "It was all just mist and fog," she confirmed what Izzy had been thinking. "And I don't know. I'm not that great at research. I'd text it to Graham if I wanted to make sure. He's a journalist – he probably knows all about researching."

"I might," Izzy said. "Though I'm not sure what I'd do with the knowledge. Somehow I don't think they'd let me back in. I don't even want to know if that purity bath would leave me alive now, or if it can still detect residues or something."

That bath…

It had been a terrible experience, feeling the water seethe and foam around her, almost like a living thing trying to pull her under and drown her. Surely, if Clary hadn't dragged her out, she wouldn't have survived that day. None of the Iron Sisters had made any move to help her.

And as much as she hated to remember that experience, it wouldn't leave her alone – not in a way that gave her nightmares, though she'd had some of those, too. It was more of a nagging at the back of her mind, something that didn't add up and that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

Working adamas was a delicate thing. Everyone knew that. The Iron Sisters used special runes to purify themselves to allow them to do that work. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the process. It was why the Sisters limited their contact to other Nephilim to the absolutely unavoidable minimum.

"Alec, would you expect the Iron Sisters to let anyone into the Citadel without making sure they carried no contamination first?"

Her brother looked up from his work. "Wouldn't that destroy their current work? You're the one who studied them. I'd have to read up on them first, but my best guess is: no."

"What would you expect they'd do with anything demonic trying to enter?"

"They're the epitome of deadly warriors," Alec said. "I'd expect they'd kill it to neutralize it."

"Or her," Izzy said, slowly. "Aldertree knew what _yin fen_ was when he gave it to me. How can he not have made the connection that, carrying that in my body, there was a good chance I wouldn't make it back from the Citadel? Even if he told the truth and didn't know about the trial as such?"

They had all ceased their work now, focusing on her.

"That would mean he wanted you to die even then." The disgust for Aldertree that was evident in Alec's voice was thicker than it had ever been before. "Did he have reason to do that already?"

"He did," Jace said, surprisingly fast. "We'd started questioning things. Maybe just dealing with Clary would have been enough. She's never been… indoctrinated the way we were. She could ask questions we'd been trained to not even think about. As far as he was concerned, we were probably all contaminated already."

"As evidenced by Alec choosing Magnus over Lydia," Clary suggested.

"And Jace's answers under the influence of the Soul Sword," Alec added.

"Speaking of 'contaminated'." Something else had just hit Izzy, the force of it making her feel dizzy. Why had she never considered this before? "How does a diplomat who used to be a field medic get hold of several tins of a powerful, illegal drug to just hand out to people? How can he keep it in his office like that? He didn't even keep it locked away – it was just in a box." A box she'd gone back for once, trying to steal more _yin fen_ and not finding anything but an empty tin. Lindsay had caught her that day. Had she ever apologized to her for the way she'd snapped at her?

She wasn't really surprised she hadn't thought much about that aspect of it before. First, she'd been hooked on vampire venom, going from one dose to the next and not thinking very well of anything else in between either. Then she'd gone through withdrawal, which wasn't a good prerequisite for clear thought. Then things had happened so fast, and they'd never had a moment to really settled down and think.

"Until proven differently," Alec decided, "we'd better assume Aldertree was trying to clean up even then – in which cleaning up means removing us, or at least some of us – from the game. And in that context, I'd love to know what he was really doing on that power core when I was on the roof with him."

"I really want to dig a bit into who Victor Aldertree is." There was a fire burning in Izzy's eyes as she put the book down. "I want to know his background, his connections. Where was he posted, whom does he know, where does he overlap with whom?"

"We know he overlaps with our Nightshade," Alec said. "While we're at it, I want to know how much truth there was to that story he told me about his ex the werewolf he was forced to kill. He showed me the scars, but that only says that something scratched him."

"Yeah, and showing off his scars was more important than shutting down the power core, which might have saved any number of lives." Jace's voice had a bitter note. He had been used as a tool that day, unknowingly causing destruction, but it still gnawed at him when he allowed himself to think of it.

"He was lucky he didn't turn," Alec mused. "Why are people like him always the ones that get lucky?"

Before they had any chance to answer that question, a spark of fire in the air drew their attention.

Alec caught the message and scanned it quickly.

"It appears," he said as he read, "that the last person to see Nicholas Nightshade in the wild has reconsidered. Tatyana Redwood wants to see us. Her secretary or whoever he is politely requests that we let him know which time tomorrow would be convenient for us to drop by. She's specifically requesting Jace."

"Not another groupie!" Jace groaned. "Well… she can't be any worse than Linnie, can she?"

Clary gave him an amused look. "Jace, if you consider Linnie bad, you really need to check out some mundane fan behavior. Trust me – Linnie's perfectly harmless and nice as fans go."

*

_December 13 th, 2016_

Now that one of their leads had resurfaced, they'd spent a considerable share of the last evening working out the details – and finding that they hadn't really planned much beyond contacting the woman. What _were_ they hoping to get from her?

They had a vague idea that any information on Nightshade could be helpful eventually, but going in and just asking her to tell them everything she knew seemed wrong.

They had no idea what had prompted her sudden change of mind, or what she wanted of them. Had Imogen become involved? Had someone else?

They hadn't seen the Nightshade glamor again, though they'd been looking carefully every time they were near Clary's house. They'd scanned the Clave assembly for him, though none of them had expected to spot him there. Entering a room that full with a face that well-known would surely have led to someone recognizing him.

In the end, they settled for telling her that the glamored person existed, and taking it from there.

Putting their afternoon appointment from their minds, they went through their morning schedule as usual. Half-expecting his father or Aldertree to press the matter of his evaluation, now that an official mention of his leadership skills would make it increasingly difficult to claim that he was incapable of being in the field – or, going with that, a demand that he return to his posting in New York immediately since there clearly was nothing wrong with him at all – Alec was quite relieved when the only fire messages that arrived for him all morning continued the last day's theme: congratulations from people he knew at least vaguely, interspersed with rare cases of letters asking for advice on how to become as heroic as they were. Judging by the handwriting, the latter tended to come from pre-rune-ceremony children. Having to draft replies to those almost made him wish he _had_ been sent back to New York first thing after the assembly.

The address the Redwood invitation had given them was down one of the alleys on the opposite side of Alicante, where the city was bordered by a wall and gates, with none of the increasingly lavish estates.

The door was opened by an older Nephilim wearing a dark expression that looked to be so habitual that it had permanently imprinted itself on his features. His hair was a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper, while his close-cropped beard remained a solid black. What was visible of his skin over the neck of his sweater and at his wrists was heavily runed.

Alec held up the letter they had received the night before. "We've been asked to come here,"

Somehow, he managed to deepen his scowl. "Let me tell you right away that I think that this is a very bad idea."

"Objection noted," Alec said. "But I believe someone else thinks differently?" He made no move to approach further and forced his stance to remain relaxed, even though his muscles wanted to tense in light of the unfriendly reception.

The step back from the open door, clearing the way so he could wave them inside, clearly cost the man some effort at self-control. "You're not the first who've asked to interview Tatyana," he said, his voice a low rumble as if he had reason to not want to be overheard. "But you are the first she has asked to see. If you do anything that will make her feel threatened…" He let the thought hang in the air.

"We understand," Alec told him, though he wasn't sure that he did. "We'll do our best. We haven't come to _interview_ her. We just want to talk."

"I think that goes both ways," Jace noted. He was straining to wipe as much of the mud as possible from any part of the wheelchair that might touch anything in the house. "I'm sorry," he apologized with a look at the tracks he had already left on the hardwood floor. "I can't wipe my shoes so well… or what passes for them."

"Never mind," the older man told him. Alec wasn't sure if he was giving Jace marks for effort or simply trying to avoid having to think about the matter of Jace's current situation in any more detail.

The layout of the house was reminiscent of the Lightwood and Fairchild houses, with a corridor leading in from the front door and a set of wooden stairs accessing the higher floors.

"Tatyana!" The man called up the stairs in a voice that could surely be heard anywhere in the small house. "Your guests are here!"

They were led into a kitchen – small but comfortable like everything they could see of the building, with a square table and a set of chairs placed in the free space. The four quickly found themselves seated – deposited, really, from the way the man's curt instructions felt like – on two sides of that table. It was lucky they didn't expect to be invited for dinner, since quarters would have been quite cramped if anyone had had to handle any implements there.

"It's a nice place you have here, Mr. …?" Izzy began, looking around appreciatively.

It was true. Someone had done their best to make the most of what space was available, and they'd been highly successful at it.

"Anestis Redwood," the man said, sounding as if just giving them his name was a painful procedure. "I'm Tatyana's great-uncle. She's been living with us ever since – that thing happened."

'That thing' doubtlessly being Nightshade, Alec thought. He was starting to feel uneasy. Things were beginning to not add up. Maybe he was entirely mistaken in his interpretations, but to him it didn't sound as if what Anestis had just disclosed matched the information that Tatyana had never been taken off the active list.

His thoughts were interrupted by an older woman entering the room. The ringlets of dark blonde streaked with grey that framed her face were the only thing that looked soft about her. She, too, wore combat runes on every inch of exposed skin of her arms and neck.

"Stop scaring the guests, Anestis," she scolded, but there was a clear tone of affection in her voice, rather than a reprimand. Turning to study the four, she added: "You must forgive him. He is very protective."

"We understand," Izzy said. Her scrutiny of the woman's runes was less concealed than Alec's, and didn't remain unnoticed.

"We were with Special Forces, Anestis and I," she said, glancing down at the black lines. "And that's well enough. Tatyana feels safer with us."

They exchanged a glance. Why would she feel unsafe after the criminal who had hurt her had been arrested and locked away forever? It wasn't like he could reach her from the City of Bones.

Alec also noted that the woman's marks were sharp and even, rather than showing the slightly blurred look of old runes damaged by skin renewing itself. She must have still been refreshing them regularly.

"My name is Elizabeth," the woman told them. "Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?"

"Only if it's no trouble," Alec said.

"Don't rush her," Anestis told them, and it took him a moment of confusion before he realized the man wasn't referring to his wife. "She's barely talked to anyone outside of the family in the last twelve years."

Alec nodded, and he saw his reaction reflected in the other three.

"We'll do our best," he promised. "It's not our intention to cause trouble."

"Oh, but you will," Anestis grumbled, which earned him another look from his wife.

"She was very impressed when she read that article yesterday," Elizabeth added as she put cups in front of them and poured. "Especially by you." Her eyes rested on Jace.

"Which part of me?" he asked.

"The part where you still go out and hunt demons."

Jace lowered his eyes to his cup as if there was something particularly interesting in the dark liquid. "The demons were an accident. That wasn't planned by any of us. I don't actually go out and actively hunt demons."

Movement by the door made them all raise their heads and turn their attention there.

At first, the slight figure who had appeared seemed to shy back from their sudden looks, and for a moment Alec wondered if they had managed to chase off the woman they'd come to talk to simply by looking up when she arrived.

They glanced at each other, acutely aware of Anestis' icy glare, daring any of them to complain.

A moment later, Tatyana entered, silently and without looking at any of them. Her eyes were fixed on the floor and she kept her head down, as if not acknowledging that there were four strangers in the kitchen made them less real – never mind that she'd asked them to come.

She couldn't possibly see the protective look Anestis directed at her, but the feeling of support radiating out from him must have reached her somehow as she approached, sliding into the free chair next to her great-uncle.

Tatyana wore a simple black dress, as plain as it could get. The only accessory she seemed to have on her was a handkerchief wrapped around her right hand. Her hair, as black as Anestis' must have once been, was cut short, and yet she seemed to somehow manage to hide behind it.

Elizabeth placed another cup before her, taking the time to briefly put a hand on the woman's shoulder.

Alec could see her tense, either at the contact or because the display of reassurance was uncomfortable to her in the presence of people who weren't family. The latter, probably. He thought there was some surprise in the older woman's reaction.

Tatyana put her hands on either side of the cup, letting the warmth seep into her palms.

"Thank you for seeing us," Alec said. He kept his voice down, but managed to strike a tone that was merely polite. It was impossible to miss that whatever had happened to this woman had broken her in some way. Still, talking to her as if he was speaking to a frightened child seemed wrong.

There was no doubt about it, though: This was not an actively fighting Nephilim.

She nodded, still without looking at them.

Unsure of how to proceed, Alec glanced at his sister from the corner of his eye. Maybe he should have asked her to take the lead. She was smiling encouragement at him.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one who wasn't sure of what to do with the pause that had resulted. When Tatyana spoke, her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible across the table. What he could make out of her words sounded strangely slurred, and Alec was glad that her uncle immediately repeated them.

"She asks what you wanted to know." His tone was more neutral than before, but his eyes still flashed a warning at them.

Alec took a deep breath. Now that they were sitting across from her, actually asking her about the man who had caused her current condition – whatever that was – seemed entirely inappropriate. An idea struck just in time before the silence could grow too uncomfortable. "You were part of the team that investigated Nicholas Nightshade twelve years ago?" he asked, following the idea they had had when they'd first read her service entry.

Surprise made her look up. She hadn't expected that question.

Her face was young – impossibly young for a woman ten years his senior, Alec thought. Maybe it was their own recent excessive use of the method that helped him, but it didn't take him more than a second to understand. She was wearing a glamor – a glamor of the seventeen-year-old girl she'd been before her encounter with the man who had left even Inquisitor Herondale shaken.

She nodded, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the cloth wrapped around her hand in a motion that looked fully automatic – something repeated so often it required no more thought than a blink.

Instead of returning her focus to her cup, she merely inclined her head a little, looking at Alec in a strangely sideways manner.

"We need some information on… his habits, his usual haunts, how he evaded discovery for so long."

Her words were louder now, though no clearer than before.

"It's all in the files from back then," Anestis translated. "They kept a detailed record of all they found once they had narrowed down their list of suspects. Nightshade was the one labeled suspect number seven."

Alec blinked. Did that mean that they had assumed that at least seven – possibly more – Nephilim in Alicante were capable of performing the kind of atrocities Nightshade must have done? What were the implications of that?

"I'm sorry," he said. "We don't have access to the records. Someone has deleted everything that was connected to his name from the database. The court records are gone, too."

She frowned at that. "Why'd anyone want to do that?"

This time, Anestis' repetition only served to confirm what Alec thought he'd heard. He gave a half-shrug. "I don't know. But that's how it is. We wouldn't have bothered you if we'd had another source."

Tatyana lowered her eyes again, but this time it clearly was because she was focusing on her memories. "We never knew when he started," she said eventually, her uncle repeating it more clearly again. "The first killings in Alicante happened about the same time I joined the Inquisitor's office. 2002. I wasn't assigned to the investigations until a year or so later. He only made it on the list of suspects towards the end – when he killed his parents. We thought maybe they'd observed something. His other victims had all been younger, but he treated them just the same."

Alec didn't want to ask her about what that meant. He nodded, indicating for her to go on.

"His reaction wasn't right, you know?" She'd looked up again, but her gaze seemed directed inwards, as if she was fully inside her memory. "Everyone else who'd seen the results of his work was … shocked, in shock even. When he identified them, he just seemed – like someone acting out all the motions he thought someone grieving should be going through."

"He could have not been grieving because their relationship hadn't been good," Jace threw in.

"It wasn't that. The victims – they looked bad. They gave some of us nightmares. He got the grieving part right, but he didn't _react_ the way everyone else did… if you know what I mean?"

She'd shifted a little, looking at Jace in that same strange way she'd previously favored Alec with.

"I think I do," Alec said, though he wasn't sure at all. What _had_ Nightshade done to his victims? What was hidden under Tatyana Redwood's glamour?

She dabbed at her lips again with the back of her hand before she went on.

"Mostly, he was entirely normal. He was attached to an institute but he'd found an interest in research, so he did a few months' work with the library, a few months in his institute, and so on."

"What was he researching?" Izzy asked.

The answer came fast, and it was the clearest word they'd heard from her yet. "Angels."

She paused, as if surprised herself by the speed on her reaction. "Any time you were looking for him while he was in Alicante, chances were you'd find him in the library. He'd put on about a dozen _enkeli_ , too."

Jace leaned forward slightly. "That seems excessive."

"It's not unheard-of," Tatyana told them. "He had no close contacts in Alicante, other than his parents. Then those were gone. When he wasn't in the library, he went hiking. He said he loved the mountain trails, and caves were fascinating. I don't think we ever found all the dead vampires and werewolves and Seelie he left behind in those caves."

She was talking in a calm, matter-of-fact tone now, and Alec could imagine that that was how she'd learned to give reports back when she'd been working. Detached, not allowing her own reactions to anything she had seen or heard or read to influence the presentation towards her supervisors.

Anestis was still repeating her words, but he was less professional about it. His expression had changed, hanging somewhere between surprise and dismay.

About to continue, Tatyana cleared her throat and coughed, before raising her cup to her lips to take a careful sip. It wasn't hard to guess that she wasn't used to speaking so much. Instead of gripping it by the handle, she raised the cup between both palms, her fingers barely involved. That was odd. She'd used all of her hands to gesticulate just before, and there hadn't seemed to be anything wrong with them.

"Why do you need to know all of this now that he's dead?" she asked.

That took them aback, and Alec found his own surprise reflected in the eyes of his three companions.

"You didn't know?" That was Anestis, speaking for himself.

Alec shook his head. "We thought he was in a cell in the City of Bones."

"We were informed of his death by fire message. He was found dead in his cell the night of October 16th." Anestis' voice was saturated with disgust. He clearly would have preferred Nightshade's punishment to last for longer than a mere dozen years.

Alec knew that he was staring, and hearing the date didn't help. He was sure that his reaction was mirrored by the other three as well, even without looking at them.

"Does that date mean anything to you?" Anestis demanded. His voice had taken on a more distant, warning tone again.

"That's the night in which we killed Valentine," Clary said.

"The night in which you killed Valentine," Jace corrected her.

That couldn't be connected – could it? No matter how Alec turned it in his mind, he could find no way to link the two deaths – and yet it seemed too strange to be a coincidence.

"Thank you," Alec said slowly. "For the information – all of it. Would you mind greatly if we contacted you again if we have any further questions down the road?" They had to sort this new information before they could sensibly work with it, and see if they could come up with anything that made the least bit of sense.

Anestis looked about ready to refuse, but Tatyana nodded. Then she turned to Jace. "Is it true that you plan to go back into the field?"

Without missing a beat, her uncle started to relay her words.

Jace cut him off. "Thank you very much, but it's only my legs that don't work. My ears are perfectly fine." There was an edge to his voice.

Surprise registered on both Redwoods' faces.

"I'm not going to go out on missions," Jace said, talking to Tatyana. "But I'll support my team. And if something unexpected happens – well, we've seen that I can still hold my own."

"Why _are_ you interested in that monster if you didn't know he was dead?" Anestis asked, frowning. "I assumed you were going to use his death as a reason to warm up the entire story again for everyone who may have forgotten about it."

For a second, Alec considered making up a lie. Then he figured that these people probably deserved to know the truth – in particular because of all the unknowns they still had in their equation. If all the information about Nightshade was gone from the database, who was to say that whoever had done it wouldn't try to silence the people who had that information in their heads?

"There is someone walking around Alicante using Nightshade's face as a glamor," Alec said. "Not Nightshade as he was then, Nightshade as he'd look now, if he was healthy and free and alive. He's tried to break into Clary's house. The only reason we can think of for choosing that particular likeness is that he's making a statement – it's not like it's inconspicuous or anything. We want to be prepared as far as we can be in case we come across him again." He left out the part where the person wearing Nightshade's face had tortured Magnus, cutting up his hands and—

His eyes went to Tatyana's hands again, which looked perfectly normal. But her face was glamored. Was it possible that her glamor extended farther, covering up scars from cuts that went through muscles and tendons all the way to the bone, the same way he had tried to destroy Magnus' hands?

That didn't make any sense either. They'd gone for Magnus' hands because he was a warlock who used his hands to channel his magic. There'd been purpose behind that.

"That can't be," Anestis said. "No one was allowed near that cell. No one could have taken that glamor." From the way he said it, it sounded like he knew from experience. Alec wondered what he'd wanted to do there.

"Show him, Clary," Alec said, and she fished her drawing out of her messenger bag to hand it to the older Nephilim.

Looking at it, he angled it away from his niece, but she'd leaned over too quickly, catching a glimpse at the face it showed.

The sound she made didn't resemble anything Alec had ever heard before, as stark horror appeared in her eyes and she pushed back from the table, surging to her feet and fleeing the room before anyone could say a word.

Elizabeth went after her, while Anestis' hands tore the page, putting the pieces on top of each other and tearing them again until all that remained was a small heap of shreds.

"I think it's time for you to leave now," he said, his voice cold as ice. "Go. And don't contact any of us again."


	25. Chapter 25

_December 14 th, 2016_

"You're shooting well."

Jace's head jerked around at the voice, as familiar as it was unwelcome and out of place.

He'd come out to the archery range for an extra round. Additional target training felt like a necessity right now. His knives still hadn't been returned to him, and he wasn't entirely happy with his performance with the bow just yet.

The snow at least no longer daunted him as badly. After the first set of heat charms, saving his fingers from being constantly wet and cold, he'd gone over the chair with a variety of other marks, glamoring those that weren't valid runes into invisibility, until he finally found himself able to navigate even in newly fallen snow. It wasn't perfect, but he didn't get stuck to the point of not being able to free himself anymore.

He had once again regained a bit of independence. Though Alec hadn't said a word, Jace suspected that it had come as just as much of a relief to his _parabatai_ as it had to him. While Jace appreciated the new wheelchair's low backrest, it had also meant that Alec had had to stoop down to push him anywhere, and he'd started to fear for his friend's back as well.

"Thank you," Jace said, his tone just a little strained. "I don't think you're supposed to be in Alicante."

The creature behind him laughed, and the sound grated in his ears even though it wasn't, objectively speaking, unpleasant. It was more that his last personal encounter with the queen who ruled the Seelie court closest to the New York entrances into the Seelie Realm had been extremely unpleasant, and her recent deal with Valentine had done absolutely nothing to endear her to any of them.

Neither had her capture of Simon. Though Jace might have been able to do without Simon, it had hit Clary hard, and so, by extension, he had been very much displeased with the entire affair.

"I go where I will," the Seelie Queen declared.

"So I have noticed," Jace returned.

 "I wanted to talk to you, Jace," the Seelie Queen said, lightly walking through the snow until she was standing next to him. Though dressed quite scantily, she didn't seem to be cold in the least.

"You are talking," Jace pointed out. He put another arrow to the string and aimed carefully.

"I've come to offer you a deal."

The arrow struck at the outer edge of the bull's eye. Not as good as he'd have liked, but acceptable.

"I'm not interested," he said.

She laughed again. "But you haven't even heard it yet."

"I'm not interested," he repeated. He couldn't help but think of what one of the Seelie who associated with the Gale family had called the queen: Bat-shit crazy. It was as accurate a description for her as he had ever heard.

"Seelie magic could make you walk again," the queen said, each word sweet as honey.

It was honey coating a sticky trap, as he knew. Even without knowing that it was just over a week before the Gales would take care of his injury, he wouldn't have fallen for it – or so he hoped.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Jace said. "I'm still holding out for my angel blood to kick in."

The queen gave a tinkling peal of laughter that made Jace want to strangle her then and there.

"Angel blood isn't going to help with that," she declared.

He forced himself to give a nonchalant shrug. "Whatever. I'm okay. I can live with it if I stay like this." He took aim once more.

"Oh Jace," she said, giving an amused sigh. "Do you really believe that?"

"Of course," Jace told her. "I'm doing well enough right now, aren't I?"

She seemed determined to find everything he said today laughable.

"Do you really think Alec will want to have you along when he goes back in the field? You're a liability, Jace, keeping him up. He'll always have to make sure you're safe first. And what if anything happens to you? He's your _parabatai_. He'll die as well if the pain of feeling you killed renders him unable to react." She gave him a moment to let her words sink in.

While Jace had to admit that she had a point, it wasn't one that was connected to his current condition. That was always a risk when _parabatai_ went into battle. It was something they knew and accepted, because they also knew that the benefits of their bond by far outweighed that danger.

Not getting quite the reaction she'd desired, the queen continued: "And Clary? How long until she finds someone else? Someone who isn't damaged? She may be staying with you out of pity now, but how long will that last? Do you think she's going to marry you if she has to be your nurse as well as your wife?"

That one could have stung, once – before they'd known as certain as they'd ever known anything that they had that virtually unbreakable connection between them that the Gales called a second-circle bond. It was as solid as his _parabatai_ bond with Alec, and, as far as the Gale family was concerned, marked the two of them as married, though they hadn't gone through any ceremony formalizing their union.

"Don't you have a tree to tend to?" Jace asked, his tone one of deliberate disinterest. He let his current arrow fly, placing the next one on the string without even checking where the first landed. He knew it was a perfect hit. It had felt just right.

He turned slightly, angling his bow sideways. He wouldn't be able to shoot like that, but _she_ didn't know that. "Once upon a time, trespassers were shot on sight," he said, calmly. "Sometimes I think it's time to revive some old customs."

"I will not repeat my offer," the queen said. "This is a one-time opportunity for you."

"One I'll pass, and gladly," Jace repeated his assertion. "Now if you please? This _is_ private property, and it's rather dangerous to stand on the range while someone is practicing. Accidents happen and arrows have been known to fly the wrong way."

*

_December 15 th, 2016_

Visiting Aline and using the Penhallow pool had become another addition to their day, supplementing their shared exercise. Once he'd forgotten his initial insecurity, Jace had found that Martin had been right – swimming was easy and felt good.

They were just on their way back home, somewhat tired but content, when Izzy's outstretched hand stopped them as they were about to enter the square the Lightwood house was situated on. She pointed, wordlessly, before her hands rapidly went through a string of motions that brought only confusion to Clary's face.

Right. They were going to have to teach her the signs they used when silence was of the essence. They could start on that whenever they freed any other slot.

Alec kept it simple for her, putting a finger to his lips and pointing first at her and Jace, then at the house, before indicating himself and Izzy and the darkly hooded figure lurking in the shadows across the square.

Clary and Jace both nodded, continuing on their way hand-in-hand, while the Lightwood siblings crept around the square, approaching their target near-noiselessly.

They managed to get into position, both with hands on their blades as they moved in.

The watcher was focused on Clary and Jace, not paying any attention to anything else, as it seemed. Alec mentally shook his head. That wasn't very professional of them. Not keeping an eye and an ear on one's environment typically got a person killed.

Not intending to go quite so far, Alec reached out to put a hand on the cloaked shoulder.

The scream of pure terror that produced startled him into clamping his hand shut, which was just as well, since it was the only thing that kept his captive from bolting.

The figure spun, and Alec found himself staring into the last face he would have expected to see beneath that hood.

"Whoa!" he said, forcing his voice to keep some semblance of calm. "Tatyana, it's me! Alec. It's okay - you're okay. What the hell are you _doing_ here?"

The panic in her eyes receded only slowly as knowledge of who had caught her started to seep through, and Alec felt the tension under his hand give way to uncontrolled trembling, making him afraid to let go. He wasn't sure she'd stay on her feet if he did.

Izzy appeared on Tatyana's other side, shaking her head but putting an arm around the older woman.

"You scared us," she claimed. "We thought who-knows-who was hiding out here. Come on. Let's get you inside."

There was no way for them to tell if the meaning of those words actually registered, but at least Tatyana's legs moved and she let them lead her across the square, though Alec could feel the trembling intensify when they were out in the open.

"Easy," he muttered under his breath. "It's not far and we're all right here."

Why had she come over unaccompanied if she was that afraid? Of whom he didn't have to ask. Somewhere out there was a person who wore Nicholas Nightshade's face.

"See?" Izzy said as soon as they stepped through the front door. "We're inside now. It's safe. No one here but the four of us."

Clary closed the door behind them with a questioning look at the Lightwoods. Izzy shook her head at her, shrugging. At this point, they knew exactly as much as Clary did.

Tatyana was still breathing heavily, her arms crossed tightly in front of her body as she tried to curl in on herself to protect herself against whatever attack she feared. The trembling under Alec's hand continued unabated.

"Can you get her to the living room and sit her down?" He asked his sister, hoping that Tatyana would feel safer with only a woman's hands on her. "I'll run and grab a quilt."

She nodded, shifting her hold to compensate for the loss of Alec's support.

The Gale quilts were so thick with protective charms they were basically fit to be used as a tranquilizer - in addition to affording a user the best rest of their life if they were used for sleeping underneath.

By the time Alec returned, carrying his folded quilt, Izzy and Clary had maneuvered their visitor into the living room and onto the sofa, where Clary was rubbing circles on her back while Izzy continued to feed her a string of reassurances.

"Can I take the cloak?" She asked, tugging slightly on the garment, when she saw Alec appear in the doorframe.

Tatyana didn't resist as she pulled it off and folded it up efficiently before she put it on the sofa's armrest.

The quilt's calming effect became evident as soon as the heavy fabric touched Tatyana's shoulders, though it took a while before her hands started to still and her breathing became anything that approached regular.

They waited, letting the magic do its work, until Jace came to join them. He brought a mug of steaming, hot liquid, the sweet smell clearly showing that he had borrowed a page out of Allie's book - with the exception that Allie had enough foresight among her many gifts that she tended to have the hot chocolate ready before someone started to have a panic attack in her living room.

Clary took the mug from him and placed it in Tatyana's hand, holding it until she could gently raise her other hand to the warm ceramic as well. Clearly she, too, had noticed the way Tatyana had handled her coffee.

They waited, watching and hoping that what they were doing was going to be enough. None of them fancied having to send a message to Anestis and Elizabeth to inform them that they needed to come over speedily to collect their grand-niece because they had unfortunately managed to scare her witless.

"I needed to talk to you," Tatyana finally said, her words slurring even worse than they had the other day.

"If you'd sent a fire message, we would have been home," Izzy said, reasonably. "And we wouldn't have mistaken you for a threat."

The other woman shook her head. "Writing is… hard. And Uncle couldn't know."

Alec felt himself frown as he parsed that. "Tatyana, is he keeping you against your will?"

She shook her head quickly. "Oh no! He's just… protective. Very protective. He—They retired to take care of me."

That wasn't mutually exclusive, but he said nothing.

"So you snuck out of the house to come here because you needed to talk to us but he couldn't know you're talking to us?" Alec summarized. "Or are you officially on some other errand?"

Another mute shake of her head followed as she visibly collected herself. "Haven't been out… since. I didn't have to sneak. They don't expect me to go out."

"You haven't been out of the house in twelve years?" Izzy sounded shocked.

The mug put down safely on the table, Tatyana wiped a hand against the quilt on her shoulder. It was impossible to miss now that whatever the glamor was hiding, her fingers couldn't grip. Clary reached out to adjust the blanket for her, allowing her to wrap herself more tightly in it.

"Too afraid," Tatyana said, her eyes fixed on the floor between the sofa and the table. Clearly, she found the principle mortifying.

Izzy put a hand on her arm again. "Hey," she said. "No one's judging. And you're here now, so obviously you've conquered that when it was urgent enough."

The twitch of Tatyana's lips was too shaky to be called a smile, but at least it suggested the words had gotten through.

If that was true, Alec could about imagine the reaction if Anestis and Elizabeth went to check on Tatyana and found her gone. They probably should have insisted that she at least sent a fire message to them, no matter that writing was hard for her. On the other hand, he wanted to avoid anything that might change her mind about sharing whatever it was that had driven her out of the house after twelve years.

"Why would your uncle not allow you to share … whatever it is … with us?" Clary asked.

"He doesn't know." Tatyana dabbed at her mouth with the handkerchief she once again had wrapped around her hand, before reaching for the mug again. She only cradled it between her palms, the warmth apparently helping to calm her. "I never shared some things."

Alec nodded. "He didn't want you to talk to us again because of how our visit ended."

She mutely mirrored his motion.

"Do you still want to share it?"

"No," she said. "But I have to. If you'll allow me. It's… not pretty."

"We'll take anything that may help," Alec said. "We've dealt with not-pretty before."

Tatyana closed her eyes. "Not to that degree. You'll have to put the memory sharing rune on me. And I'll have to take the glamor off for that."

"Okay." They watched her put the mug away again and fish her stele out, holding it the same way between her flat palms. It wasn't hard to see why drawing runes or writing was difficult for her if that was how she had to handle everything.

The glamor rune was placed on her side, where she could reach after pushing up her sweater a little.

The glamor dropped, and she kept her gaze firmly on the floor, letting her suddenly-longer hair obscure her features. As she placed her stele on the table, Alec caught the first view of her unglamored hands.

It wasn't that her fingers were rendered useless by what injuries she had sustained: They were gone, the only thing remaining two stumps on her left hand that did not look like enough to clamp anything between.

Seeing that triggered a memory in Alec, unlikely, impossible, but just as insistent.

"Tatyana," he said, keeping his voice low. "Can you look at me?"

She raised her head slowly, giving him a view of the left side of her face at first – the side she'd always turned towards them when they'd talked. Then she turned her head, and the reason for that became evident.

The eye on that side was gone, with only a mass of scar tissue remaining. Deep scars marred the cheek as well, pulling on the corner of her mouth, though that alone couldn't account for the strange way in which she spoke. Alec recognized the shapes of those scars immediately: they formed the outlines of the same rune Imogen had used to torture Valentine for information.

"Thank you," he said. "Is it alright if I come over to join in when you show us what we need to know?"

She nodded, and he moved to sit on Izzy's other side. One glance exchanged with her told him that she was having similar thoughts to his own.

"May I share, too?" Jace asked.

Another nod, and she shook back her sleeve and looked at Izzy. "Can you do the rune?"

Izzy hesitated before she took the other woman's stele. Of course, Tatyana couldn't know what exactly it was that made her reluctant to mark anyone with one of those devices.

"I won't force it on you," she said. "Just… give me the rune and I'll give the memory to anyone who wants it."

"It's not that," Izzy said, picking up the silver rod. "It's a bit difficult to explain. Do you mind if I take mine?"

Tatyana shrugged. "Makes no difference."

"Yes, it does," Izzy told her, putting the charm on the older woman's arm in quick, bold lines and drawing a frown from her.

"It doesn't burn."

"I know," Izzy said. "That really does make no difference. Ready?"

She placed her hand on Tatyana's mutilated one. Clary's hand dropped on top of her own almost instantly, while Alec hurried to sketch another sharing charm on the inside of Izzy's free arm to put his palm on it, and Jace mirrored the same procedure on Clary.

The memory rushed in, almost painfully bright in spite of being lit by witchlight only.

Tatyana was in a windowless room with bare walls, flat on her back and staring at the ceiling. She struggled against the shackles that held her, her efforts entirely in vain.

A face moved into her vision, the features unmistakable as a younger version of the sketch Clary had in the meantime made the third copy of. Nightshade's smile was far too serene for what they knew was going to follow.

"Are you wondering why I'm doing this?" he asked, his voice mild. "Have any of you even the slightest idea?"

"Why?" she asked. "I do want to know. Will you tell me?"

She was trying to engage him in conversation, keep him talking for as long as she could. The memory didn't exactly share her precise thoughts with them, but they did get a general impression of what had been on her mind then: Keep him busy for long enough for her colleagues to come reach them. They couldn't be far.

They couldn’t be far because they knew where she was.

"Of course." His words betrayed no excitement – there was barely any emotion at all in it. "I'll do even better. I'll show you."

He raised his arm for her to see the rune placed just above his wrist. It was the same one they were currently using. Activating it, he clamped his hand to her arm, and the gleam in his eyes was the last thing she saw before his memory blotted out his face.

They dropped into the memory inside the memory, though it became clear almost instantly that 'memory' was the wrong word.

It took them to a place that, though they couldn't tell where it was, certainly wasn't anywhere within their plane. The colors were wrong, the light a shade impossible in their world, and the shadows equally so.

Nightshade – and they with him – seemed to be floating off to the side somewhere near the ceiling, which afforded them a better view of the scene than they would have preferred.

The main feature in the room was a cot, marked with runes of binding that held a weakly struggling figure. Its nakedness and the deep blackness of its eyes made it impossible to mistake it for mundane human or Shadowhunter, though it wouldn't have been hard for this particular demon to pass in their world.

The two beings looking down on it were holding blades of shining adamas in their long-fingered hands, wearing satisfied expressions as they watched the increasing terror of their captive.

Held in place by the memory, they watched as the first blade drew a dark line on the demon's face, black ichor oozing from the cut that was soon completed into the first rune, drawing a long scream from the victim.

Words were exchanged, but the language none any of them knew. The two torturers, wings shining brightly beyond their bodies, proceeded with a detached efficiency, carving, cutting and talking in that singsong that was their speech, often drowned out by their prisoner's pain-filled sounds.

Ichor dripped down to pool in small puddles on the floor as the demon lost its fingers, tongue and eyes to the blades and its sounds turned into wordless wails.

The shared memory seemed to go on forever, as they watched more runes being carved into the demon's skin, more pieces being sliced off and cast carelessly aside. They felt nothing but relief when the tortured creature finally fell silent, its faint remaining struggles ceasing entirely just before the body and all the parts that had once been attached to it disintegrated into black ashes.

Nightshade's face was back, the smile still firmly in place.

"I've been blessed with these visions for as long as I can remember," he told her. "But it took me many years to understand their meaning. Are you proud that you will be part of the recreation of their angelic work? You should be proud."

Tatyana broke the contact, sparing them – and herself – the rest of that memory.

Moving quickly, Izzy wiped away the charm she had left on Tatyana's arm, erasing any trace of what they'd just done.

The four younger Nephilim were pale as they looked at each other, shaken by what they had seen, but not in the way of someone hit unprepared.

It didn't escape their guest's notice.

"You were _bait_?" was the first thing Izzy asked, giving voice to the only conclusion permitted by that sense of knowing that her rescuers weren't far.

She inclined her head. "That's why they kept me on full pay all this time. Compensation for misjudging the speed at which he worked." Her remaining eye narrowed. "You aren't surprised – by his madness?"

"No," Alec admitted. "We – we've come across something very similar. We can share it with you, but it's not pretty either."

Wordlessly, she held out her hand.

"Not like that," he said. "It's in a book. Jace?"

"Yeah. Be right back." Jace's voice was low, as if he was afraid that by speaking more loudly he could wake some horror lurking in the room with them, held at bay only by the force of their combined wills.

When he returned, putting the book before her opened on the last entry, she frowned at the page in a way that reminded them very much of Magnus' fruitless attempt at deciphering the text.

"Something's wrong with this," she declared after a while. "Is it warded against being read?"

Alec groaned. "Yes. The ward came with the book. It only works sometimes, and we haven't figured out the pattern yet. We have a transcript."

So much for their working theory that it was protected from anyone but Nephilim…

They swapped the book for a copy of Jace's transcript, watching her expression grow stony as she read the lines.

"What is this?" she asked, looking up at them. "Where is this from?"

"To the best of our knowledge," Alec said, realizing that they were risking a lot in confiding in someone they barely knew, but at the same time figuring that if anyone had the right to know, it was this woman, "that is David Shadowhunter's account of what drove him to become David the Silent – protecting everyone else from what he'd seen."

Alec wondered what they'd say if she asked where they had found that book. Luckily, she didn't ask.

"Do you think Nightshade read this and it drove him mad? That he thought these were things he had seen himself, in visions?" she wanted to know instead.

"Maybe." Izzy drew the word out, clearly thinking as she spoke. "Or maybe we really are dealing with two or three rogue angels who like to torture demons and for some reason he was sensitive to them."

Just assuming that there were rogue angels was probably blasphemy. There were fallen angels, though, like the one who had fathered Magnus. That suddenly made the thought a little less unlikely.

"I need a break from this," Clary said, getting to her feet. "I'll get us some pie."

No one objected to that. Alec reached for a piece of paper and a pen. "You need to let your aunt and uncle know where you are," he told Tatyana, pushing both at her. "I don't fancy having Special Forces – or even former Special Forces storm this place because they realize you're gone and they get the idea we may have anything to do with that."

He saw her cringe a little at his words, but she took the pen, holding it between what remained of her hands.

"There must be a more efficient way for that," Jace said, watching her print.

She gave him the closest thing to a glare that they had seen from her so far. "Next you're going to tell me there must be a way for me to fight and defend myself."

The quilt was doing good work, Alec thought. There was barely any fear in her voice now – only bitterness.

Izzy answered faster than he could. "Can't see why not," she said. "You have most of your body – all your kicks, elbows, parts of your hands…" she mimed a chop with the side of her hand and a thrust with its heel.

The look Tatyana gave her was incredulous, as if just suggesting such a thing was madness.

"Don't tell me you spent the last twelve years without training..?" By the sound of it, Izzy wasn't sure of her own interpretation of the older woman's reaction.

Alec and Jace exchanged a look, and Alec gave his _parabatai_ a wordless nod, telling him to take the lead in this. It had been Jace's refusal to give up active duty that had originally led to Tatyana's willingness to talk to them.

 "Gloves that'll hold on to a blade for you," Jace suggested. "Or a pen, or a fork."

Clary had returned and was distributing plates and cutlery. "Or a stele," she said, watching Tatyana send off her fire message.

"Such things don't exist," she said flatly.

"What doesn't exist can be invented," Jace returned. "The lift on the stairs out in the corridor didn't exist until we built it either."

Alec gladly accepted the large piece of blueberry pie Clary handed to him. Some edible Gale luck was exactly what he needed right now.

The others seemed to feel similarly about it, and even Tatyana's face lit up a little as she tasted the pastry, though it was unmistakable that she would have preferred to eat away from them. She hadn't responded to Jace's last comment, and they didn't press the issue.

The response to the fire message arrived before they had cleared their plates.

_I'll be there in twenty minutes._

"I could have made it back," Tatyana said, frowning at the paper. "I made it here."

"You can tell him that if you're sure it's not the quilt speaking," Alec suggested. "You may feel different about that when you're not all wrapped in protective magic. But either way you'll have to keep him from ripping our collective heads off."

She actually gave a little laugh at that. "He's not so bad," she said. She did let the quilt slide from her shoulders, though, and the tension that returned to her body was immediately visible. Her lips thinned as she rode out the reaction. "I should put the glamor back on."

"Not on our account," Izzy said, watching her juggle her stele to activate the rune again. "And you might consider aging that up a little. You'll confuse people if you walk around wearing a seventeen-year-old face."

"I don't usually meet people," Tatyana objected. "I won't confuse anyone."

"But you will." Izzy was smiling an encouragement at her. "If you drop by now and then to get your self-defense up to speed again."

*

"What do we do now?" Alec asked into the room once both Redwoods had left.

He wasn't sure if Anestis had been more upset by the fact that Tatyana had left the safety of his home unaccompanied or that he hadn't noticed it until she'd sent him her message. The older man also hadn't seemed quite sure if the appropriate reaction to that was anger – at the Lightwoods for somehow causing such a behavior – confusion or even a bit of hopefulness.

At least he hadn't ripped off anyone's head.

"Be very happy that the person walking around with his face is most definitely not Nicholas Nightshade himself," Izzy suggested.

"You mean because no one spends a dozen years in the City of Bones while retaining the ability to have an intelligible conversation?" Jace asked, shuddering a little at the thought of his own short time there and the sounds that had drifted up from the deeper levels. He wondered if Nightshade – the real Nightshade – had been among those.

"I meant because surely if it was him, there'd have been the first bodies by now," Izzy said darkly.

"One thing I'm no longer sure about is that that face really is a statement," Alec told them, picking his words slowly. "Sure, if he was all over the database – then yes. But considering that it's almost as if he never existed, and the most important thing about his madness is something that was never made known in the first place: What kind of statement would it be if no one understands it?"

"Madness?" Clary asked, just as Jace suggested: "One that is targeted at a specific person?"

Alec shrugged. "Let's call it that for now. And who'd that be? He showed that face to Magnus – who didn't know Nightshade – and to Clary's neighbors who also didn't recognize it. He apparently wore it when he talked to Aldertree, who either didn't know it or didn't care, and with that other warlock, who also didn't know it."

His sister nodded to herself. "He's wearing it quite habitually. Maybe his own face is one some or most of those people would recognize."

"That's probably only true of a few hundred people," Alec said. "So not a huge help. If the database was wiped so he _could_ use that face, he's connected high up. By the way: was it wise to basically invite Tatyana over for training?"

"We can do with some allies," Izzy pointed out. "What better way to get some?"

She didn't need to say that she wasn't just thinking of Tatyana for that.

Alec sighed. "Speaking of allies: We do need to get this place ready. If Mom and Max arrive tomorrow morning as scheduled, we don't want to have anything … incriminating lying around."

No matter how much they loved their little brother, Max had proven more times than any of them could care to count that he was going to get into just about everything that wasn't any of his business. Since he also had an eleven-year-old's sense for keeping his mouth shut when necessary – which equaled none at all – the most reasonable thing to do was to make sure that he wouldn't find anything. Their rooms would be locked from now on, and any meetings they held would have to take place under extra wards in the former guest bedroom, now shared by Jace and Clary.

They gave a collective sigh.

"I do kind of miss them," Izzy said, "but I already have a hunch that I'll regret saying that by tomorrow night."


	26. Chapter 26

_December 16 th, 2016_

The two did arrive before lunch, though with a delay owed to Robert waiting for them in the Gard and insisting on a thorough debriefing on the behavior he had observed in Alec and Izzy, as Maryse informed them as soon as the door had closed behind her.

"Where's Jace?" she asked when she was done, sounding half-confused and half-concerned at her foster-son's absence.

"Kitchen!" Jace called. "Making sure lunch doesn’t burn!"

"Jace?" Maryse asked as she entered the room a moment later, followed closely by Max. "What are you doing there?"

"Cooking," Jace told her. "We take turns."

"Why are you up there for that?" Max wanted to know.

Jace didn't stop stirring as he answered: "Because I can't look into the pots, or properly reach the stove, or the sink, from below. Do you want to give me a hand?"

"My hand doesn't work," Max pointed out, raising his left one and showing Jace fingers curled in towards his palm and refusing to obey his will as they should.

Jace wasn't impressed. "Then give me the other one," he suggested.

Max gave him an unhappy look that turned almost hopeful after a moment. "Do I get to sit on the counter, too?" Apparently the opportunity to do something that was usually forbidden beat his displeasure at being pressed into service.

Unfortunately, he was to be disappointed. "Certainly not!" Maryse decided.

"But Jace does it!" Max protested.

Jace bit his lip trying not to laugh. "Jace can't stand on his own," he pointed out. "You can. Besides, there's not enough space up here for both of us. Now why don't you get me the cream from the fridge and then start setting the table so we can all eat when I'm done here?"

"I shouldn't have to," Max declared. "I had a head injury. I am dis-abled."

"That is not a discussion you want to have with me, kiddo," Jace told him. "Because I'm going to win that one. Cream. Plates. Now."

Maryse was very carefully not looking at either of them. "You know, Jace," she said when Max, his entire posture announcing that he resented the general situation he was currently in, went to the fridge to collect the cream, "I read somewhere that mundanes have a thing called a standing frame. Maybe if we got you one of those, you wouldn't have to sit on the kitchen furniture."

So Maryse had done some googling, too…

"That's not a particularly appealing term. I think I'll pass," Jace told her as he slammed a splatter screen on one of his pots. Holding it clamped to the top with his thumbs while wrapping his fingers around the handles, he lifted pot and screen to his other side and emptied it out into the sink. Hot water went down the drain, but the cooked pasta remained safely behind.

"That's not how you use that," Maryse observed.

Jace turned the pot back upright and put it down on a cold hob. "It is now."

Max handed him the cream, and he turned towards refining the sauce.

"There's pie in the fridge," the boy announced.

"That's for dessert," Jace told him. "Which we can't have if we don't have lunch first, and for that we need a table that's actually set. Weren't you going to do that?"

Max's expression clearly told him that he hadn't been going to do that at all, but he thought better of it just in time. He shoved Jace's wheelchair out of the way to get at the cabinet that held the required items.

"Put the chair back," Jace told him as Max started towards the door. "I don't fancy being stranded on the kitchen counter while you all enjoy the food I cooked."

Satisfied that Max returned to obey, Jace turned his attention back towards the sauce that was sharing a pan with some meat. "Brakes," he reminded the boy before he could make another attempt at escaping the kitchen.

"You're adjusting quickly," Maryse observed. Her tone was somewhere between approving and surprised.

Jace' response was preceded by a dry laugh. "I'm not adjusting to the situation, Maryse. I'm just ignoring the issue."

*

It was late before they had an opportunity to sit together in the living room.

Because of the time they had been given to portal, both Maryse and Max had skipped the prior night's sleep almost entirely. Maryse could handle that.

Max, it seemed, couldn't, which was a godsend for them, since he only put up the barest of protests when their mother sent him to bed at what would have been the middle of the afternoon in New York.

Alec had gone to tell him good night, and on the way out left an alert charm on his door, and another on the corridor in the direction that led away from the bathroom and towards the stairs. Max had proven impressively in the past that he was not beyond spying on everyone and anyone, and that both his discretion and his sense for who it was safe to talk to about what were sorely lacking. None of them wanted to rely on it that the boy had learned better by his encounter with Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern in the shape of Sebastian Verlac.

For the same reason, they had soundproofed Max's room in the same manner as they had treated Robert's study, making sure that not even the best hearing enhancement rune would allow him to listen in if they were talking downstairs.

"Do you need to do something to get Magnus in?" Maryse asked when they'd settled.

Alec's shocked look drew a laugh from her.

"What?" she asked. "Do you mean to tell me you aren't somehow smuggling Magnus into Alicante nearly every night? Why else, then, has it become impossible to reach him during certain hours?" She fixed him with a look that was equal shares amused and demanding.

"Busted," Jace said.

Biting his lips, Alec set to studying the pattern of wood on the tabletop.

"Clary, could you?" he mumbled.

"Text him first," Clary suggested. "I don't want to come out in the middle of some warlock assembly. Or worse – with Magnus coming out of his bathroom stark naked."

"That's hardly the same degree of dangerous," Izzy claimed, while her brother busied himself taking out his phone and typing.

"Right," Clary agreed. "I think the warlock assembly might be safer."

Jace snickered, and Alec tossed a sofa cushion at him instantly and without even looking up from his screen. It hit his _parabatai_ square in the face, throwing him sufficiently off-balance to make him sink against the backrest. He'd been too relaxed to compensate for the sudden backwards momentum.

"Hey, watch it!" Jace tossed the missile back, aiming for Alec's middle and almost causing him to drop the phone.

"If you knock over the coffee, you clean up the mess you make. Both of you!" Maryse declared. She didn't sound very disapproving, however.

"You can go," Alec told Clary. "He's alone. And dressed."

"What do you do with the portal shards?" Maryse wanted to know as Clary left the room. "Or has she found a way to avoid those?"

"By not portaling," Jace said. "Clary found out she can go through the Wood, like Charlie."

"Not quite like Charlie," Izzy corrected. "She goes in and out through paintings."

"Ah," Maryse said, taking a sip of her coffee. "Hence the oversized picture in the corridor."

"That's our New Year's present for you!" Jace put on a hurt expression and tone. "It's a real Fairchild! There's nothing oversized about it!"

Izzy laughed. "Clary uses one of her own paintings in her studio upstairs for long-distance travel," she told their mother. "It gives her more of a boost than her mother's. But the one in the corridor is okay for just hopping inside Alicante."

"And where inside Alicante do you hop to?" Maryse asked, an eyebrow raised.

"The Fairchild townhouse," Alec replied smoothly. It was true. They'd used the paintings to travel back and forth between the two houses a lot. "Saves us a lot of time going the long way around as we help Clary catalog the inventory."

In which cataloging the inventory included a good deal of placing the smaller parts of the inventory in sketchpads so Clary would be able to present them to Allie as a catalog.

"I didn't know we had an art studio upstairs," Maryse noted.

"Clary's using my old bedroom," Jace told her. "Even with the lift, it's not practical for me right now. You don't mind that we're blocking the guest room, I hope?"

"I'll survive using the actual master bedroom," she told him. "It's not like Robert is likely to come and want to use it, too. I had the impression that he's developed an immense dislike for this building. He looked like he was going to be sick when I asked him if he wanted to join us for coffee."

"That might explain why he was so immensely busy while someone was replacing the bugs that he couldn't join them. By the way – there's one in your bedroom as well."

"I'm not surprised," Maryse said. "I assume it isn't working?"

They grinned at her. "Of course not."

"Can you show it to me anyway before we go to bed later?"

They nodded, just as steps sounded on the stairs.

"Alec, I put the big painting in your room," Clary announced as she and Magnus came in. "That's safer for taking Magnus back in the morning if Max is up already."

Magnus nodded a greeting at Maryse, and it didn't escape any of the four that both their attitudes towards each other had noticeably relaxed. The warlock slid into his usual place by Alec's side, melting against him just as he normally did.

Alec allowed himself to match his movement, though he was glancing at his mother at intervals.

Far from wearing the disapproving expression she once surely would have displayed at the sight, Maryse was smiling at them, looking, if anything, happy for their love.

"Now," Maryse said, leaning forward, "tell me everything. And then I may have something new for you as well."

She'd eaten pie; she'd met the Gales and visited Calgary, albeit only briefly; she was already in about as much danger as she could be, and if anything, then whatever they told her could only serve to help her prepare for what was to come.

So tell her they did, though they glossed over a few things. They'd 'found' the old book that had turned out to be David's journal. They never mentioned how they had discovered that Clary could enter the Wood through paintings.

Predictably, Maryse wanted to see the book. They handed it to her, waiting in suspense to see if the words would disclose themselves.

She read in silence, but it was clear that she was reading.

"Have you considered that this may not be genuine?" Maryse asked when the closed the book.

"Yes," Alec said. "But why would someone go to that much trouble? All the irrelevant entries at first, then the big thing, irrelevant entries again… The aged material, the way the second half is written, the wards? It's a lot of work to go to for a prank."

"It's old, not aged," Magnus said. "I've tested the material. There's no reason to doubt that it's exactly what it appears to be from a magical point of view."

"That is not what I wanted to hear," Maryse said.

"There's more." Izzy fixed her mother with an intense look that she maintained while she filled her in on the details they had of Nicholas Nightshade and Tatyana Redwood.

"You know," Maryse said slowly when she had finished, "that is what Valentine did: Collecting allies around him – especially those who had reason to be thankful for positive attention. That included Robert, me, Hodge… pretty much everyone from his inner circle, actually."

"You think we should stop?" her daughter asked. Her expression did not permit any conclusion as to whether she was hoping for a positive or a negative answer. "Withdraw and keep to ourselves only?"

Maryse shook her head. "I think you should be careful. If anyone finds out what you're digging into, they'll smell the next revolt. You'd be deruned and banished faster than you could think."

"What I think is that it's starting to look as if a revolt is exactly what we need." Jace's voice was hard.

Alec made a placating gesture with one hand. "Not while we have this many loose threads hanging around and more open questions than answered ones. We'll decide what needs to be done when we know more. Until then, we just stay alive." He looked at his mother. "What was it you had for us?"

"I remembered something," Maryse said. "I think that I may know what your attempted burglar was looking for in the Fairchild house."

*

_December 17 th, 2016_

They would have loved to set out with Maryse immediately to test her theory. It was Izzy who pointed out that unexpected absences could turn into an issue if Max decided to make an unplanned appearance. So they'd put it off, opting for a more organised approach.

They tried to maintain their routine the next day, while Maryse went about calling on what neighbors were home and otherwise sending fire messages and watching how the younger quartet had organized their time to interfere as little as she could.

Max did not show equal restraint. He resented having been sent back to Alicante, though he probably would have resented just about any other order equally. He declined Alec and Jace's invitation to join them in their morning workout, and snapped at his sister when she asked him if he wanted to go out with her and Clary. She deliberately had avoided using the word 'run'. He was walking more easily than he had, but the lagging reaction of one leg was still clearly evident. That wasn't going to improve without training, as even Max had to know.

He had no interest in book studies, and let his siblings know in no uncertain terms that he considered spending a morning in the library a waste of time, before he slammed the door to his room.

His displeasure continued when Clary took care of lunch after they returned, and he pronounced the meal "weird."

"Mundane, you mean," Clary said, refusing to be flustered.

"Mundanes make delicious food," Izzy added. "I didn't hear you complain about the sweets we brought you from Heidelberg, Max."

That led to a muttered declaration that a bag of sweets was for babies, and he wasn't one, so he hadn't even tried them. His sister shrugged, though the eye-roll she gave Clary suggested that she was starting to regret buying him anything to begin with.

"We'll be out riding," Alec told their mother once the table was cleared and the kitchen cleaned.

Max perked up at that. "Did you buy Clary a horse?" Going by his tone, he didn't approve of any such decision.

"Clary's riding Brownie," Izzy said. "She's great for learning on."

"But Brownie's mine!" Max objected instantly.

"You were in New York."

He scowled at her. "Now I'm here."

The four shared a look. They'd invited him along to everything so far and he'd refused everything so far. It figured that he'd want to come along for the one thing where it was singularly inconvenient.

"Change quickly then," Alec told him, visibly suppressing a sigh. "We'll figure something out about who rides on whom."

"I don't want to go riding now!" Max looked as if he was just a hair's breadth away from stomping his foot and slamming another door. "But I might later! And Brownie is mine!"

Clary had her eyes fixed on one of the higher kitchen cupboards, either focusing on a stain there or counting silently. "Max," she said finally. "May I please ride Brownie?" They had plans for that afternoon. If they had to walk for those, they weren't going to get anything else done, and probably wouldn't be back before nightfall, which, considering that temperatures plummeted even further when the sun went down, meant they'd be half-frozen by the time they'd return. It also meant that there'd be no way Jace could come along. It would probably be best if they rescheduled entirely in that case.

"No!" Max insisted. "Maybe I want to ride her later!"

"Max." Maryse's voice was stern. "There is no maybe. If Clary can't ride your pony, then you _will_."

He glowered. "Fine."

"Fine what?"

"I'll ride her later."

Alec took an audible breath as he checked on everyone else's reactions.

Jace shrugged. "Clary can ride double with one of us," he suggested.

"That's not the point of riding lessons," Izzy told him, but no one could deny that that was the fastest way to the solution of being one horse short.

Maryse stepped in. "Take Aurora. She's old enough she won't mind a beginner."

"Who's Aurora?" Clary asked.

"Mom's horse," Alec said, nodding a thank you at Maryse. "And she's right. It's a good solution."

*

They were almost at the stables when Clary realized something. She stopped.

"When you said your mother's _horse_ ," she said, sudden horror in her voice. "You were talking of one of those huge things?"

"Well," Jace said, "She _is_ taller than Brownie, but she's not huge. And as Maryse said, she's old enough to be nice and calm. You've seen her. You've fed her apples. You'll be fine on her."

"You can ride Demonsbane instead," Izzy suggested.

Clary shook her head emphatically. Out of all their horses, Demonsbane was by far the liveliest. Or maybe Izzy was the liveliest rider when she wasn't deliberately keeping herself back so she could keep an eye on her student.

"You can ride Crusader," Jace offered. "And I can take Aurora – If anyone remembers where I put the stirrups from Crusader's saddle."

Clary, having seen both Crusader and Thunder race, shook her head. "I'll pass, I think," she said. "If Crusader takes off after something, I'll never be able to stop her."

"I'm able to stop her," Jace pointed out, vaguely indicating his legs, "and I'm not in the best position for that."

"But she loves you." She thought about the situation for another moment. "When you say Aurora is old – how old is old?"

"Old enough she's not likely to take off with you," Alec said. "Old enough that Mom would probably borrow another horse if she was planning to go hunting or anything."

"Do you actually hunt?" Clary had heard talk of hunting a few times, but she found it hard to imagine any Nephilim riding out to shoot food.

"Sometimes," Alec said. "Depending on season."

"What did you think Valentine gave me that falcon for?" Jace added.

"Some people also hunt for sport." Izzy sounded as disgusted at that as Clary felt. "There are some feral werewolf packs in Brocelind Forest."

She shuddered. "They'd hunt werewolves even if they hadn't done anything?"

"Not officially," her friend told her. "There were times when just living away from civilization would have been considered a crime for a werewolf, punishable by death. Some still wish that law had never been changed. Werewolf pelts from Idris are… luxuries. Of course all the werewolf pelts sold these days are antiques." Her tone left no doubt that not all of those antiques were genuine.

"Have you ever..?" She looked at Jace. "Did Valentine make you..?"

"No." Jace's eyes and voice were honest, which was a relief. He rarely ever lied to begin with, but she wouldn't have put it past him to resort to bending the truth to avoid her discomfort. "I think he didn't want to risk being caught breaking the law. I can't imagine he would have minded otherwise."

There was more to it. Clary could tell when Jace was keeping back information. "What else?"

"Going by the journals I read, he probably wouldn't have disapproved if I'd gone and done it anyway. Apparently his other son once brought him a wolf pelt."

"Jace?"

He looked up at her.

"Promise me you'll never bring me a wolf pelt."

*

Riding Aurora turned out to be less scary than Clary had anticipated – at least as long as she stuck with Izzy's order of looking ahead instead of down.

If anything, she thought, the horse was like an older aunt, disapprovingly shaking her head over any antics the younger members of her species might get up to, and giving them such stern looks of disapproval that even Demonsbane kept his head down and his ears pointed forward.

"Is it possible that she's a lot less wobbly than Brownie?" Clary asked as they reached the outskirts of Brocelind Forest, slowing down again after a brisker trot through a previously unbroken cover of snow.

"Her strides are longer," Jace said. "Because her legs are longer. Fewer steps equals less rocking. It's like with Alec - He takes one step for every three of yours."

Alec laughed at the exaggeration, but nodded. "Doesn't mean there aren't any large horses that are terrible to sit, though."

They entered the forest, staying on the path they were on. There were no shortcuts today, no secret routes through thickets or cutting across bare fields waiting for spring.

Today, their destination was known and official. They had bags of supplies slung over the backs of their horses behind the saddles, carrying canned and fresh food, blankets and other things a person living out in Brocelind Forest might need.

It was said that Baba Agnieszka was one of the oldest warlocks alive. It was said she was the older sister of the first warlock to have ever cooperated with the Nephilim, a friend of Jonathan Shadowhunter's. It was said that the place that was now Idris had been her and her family's home since before Jonathan and his companions had met Raziel by Lake Lyn. Some even believed that it had been her brother who had raised the angel that first time.

No one knew the fate of her brother for certain since he had drifted out of Nephilim history, but he had probably gone the way many ancient Warlocks did, ceasing to participate in life and wasting away.

Baba Agnieszka remained, living on her own in a hut in the forest, built and maintained for her by the Nephilim to honor her connection to their own oldest ancestor.

"Dad took us to her once," Izzy said into a silence broken only by the sound of hooves on the snowy path. "She scared me."

"Me, too," Alec admitted, before adding in Clary's direction: "I was seven or eight at the time."

"I've never been there," Jace said. "My 'father' always told me that was something to be kept until I was older." He was so careful to always put that special emphasis on the word "father", as if he needed to remind himself at every single memory that it had been Valentine, the man who had murdered his father as well as the person he had claimed to be and the boy whose identity he had stolen for Jace.

"What's she like?" Clary asked, following Izzy's lead and giving her horse more rein so Aurora could pick her own way through slightly deeper snow.

"Beautiful and insane from what I remember," her friend told her. "She wasn't making sense, and I think that's what scared me the most. If she's doing magic the same way she's talking, you can never know if she's going to blow something up."

"She's never blown anyone up as far as I know," Alec said. "But Izzy's right. She's senile – or the closest thing to senile that a warlock can get. But you know… sometimes when a Nephilim grows really, really old, they'll stop remembering things that are recent, but they can still tell you about the hunts they did when they were young. Maybe it's the same for warlocks."

"It's the same for mundanes," Clary said.

"So it's worth a try to talk to her." Alec pointed at a path branching off the one they were on. "Down there. She doesn't like to be disturbed and often isn't very friendly to visitors, but she does accept the supplies she's brought and the work done on her home."

They continued to ride through the wintery forest, listening to the sounds around them and enjoying the quiet.

After several minutes, the path ended in a clearing that held what must have been Baba Agnieszka's hut – a cottage, really, small but neat and nicely maintained.

The woman who stepped out of the front door as they approached looked no older than they were, with hair as red as Clary's, but falling to her shoulders in thick ringlets. A fur-lined, hooded robe was her main garment. She carried a gnarled staff that was nearly as tall as she was in one hand, topped with a sphere of crystal or similar material.

A black bird flew out of a tree to sail across the clearing and touch down on her shoulder. She listened to its caw, chuckling as if in answer.

Then she lifted her staff by a few inches and brought it down hard again into the snow.

Flashes of blue energy shot from the crystal, aiming for the four of them.

The horses brought up their heads, tensing and shifting to evade, but none of them panicked. They were trained to accept magic happening in their vicinity.

One of the bolts hit Clary, and she felt the shock run through her, nearly throwing her off-balance. She could see Alec and Izzy shudder in the saddle but hold on, just as she did.

Jace was not so lucky. It was hard to say if it was the impact, or the energy, or both, that toppled him out of the saddle and off his horse into the snow.

Alec moved Thunder immediately, stopping by Crusader's side. The golden mare looked confused at having lost her rider as she prodded him with her muzzle.

"Jace?" Alec asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Jace confirmed, rolling over and pushing himself into a sitting position in the snow. "And yeah again. Stop that, Crusader." He rubbed his side with one hand. "May have bruised a rib."

Alec slid off of his horse and landed lightly in the snow. "Baba Agnieszka," he said. "We bring supplies for you. There was no need to attack us."

She looked at him, her head cocked sideways as if she, herself was some odd kind of bird. "Attack?" she asked. Her voice sounded as young as her face looked, melodious but distant. "I did not attack. Why did he jump off? Why isn't he getting up? Does he like the snow?"

Jace tried a little bow in her direction from his position on the ground. "I cannot, Baba Agnieszka. My legs are paralyzed. Alec will have to help me back up."

Baba Agnieszka turned towards Clary and Isabelle. "Why doesn't he fly then?"

"Because he's not a bird!" Clary blurted out. "He has no wings."

"Pity," Baba Agnieszka said.

Alec ignored the exchange, focusing instead on getting Jace off the ground and back up onto Crusader, who commented this new method of mounting her with a snort.

"We bring supplies," Izzy repeated Alec's words as she also dismounted. "And we were wondering if you would talk to us."

"Bring them in," Baba Agnieszka said, her eyes on the bag the young woman pulled from her horse. "Does she have wings?" She had turned in Jace's direction again, apparently determined to never address any of them directly.

"No," Jace said. "We're Nephilim. Not warlocks and not birds. We have no wings."

"Pity," Baba Agnieszka said again. "Bring them in."

Clary joined the other two on the ground, and they made short work of carrying in the bags between the three of them.

The inside of the cottage was cozy, a warm fire burning in an open hearth and the furniture as mismatched as it seemed comfortable. There appeared to be comforters and quilts wherever one looked, though none of them were of the Gale type. A pair of ravens were perched on the back of an ornately carved chair.

The cottage's resident didn't give them much time to appreciate her home. She barely left them enough to drop the bags in a corner by the hearth before she shooed them back outside.

"Baba Agnieszka," Alec tried once again, deciding to get straight to the point in the hope of getting some answer. "You knew Jonathan Shadowhunter, didn't you? Our ancestor? And Abigail, his sister? And David?"

She gave a very unladylike snort at that. "I knew Jonathan and Abigail and David. Never met his sister. Stupid children. Never found their wings. Waste of a perfectly good bird if you ask me."

The raven on her shoulder cawed his agreement.

"See, now this boy here knows where his wings are," she continued, stroking the shiny black feathers with a claw-tipped finger while taking care not to hurt the animal with its point.

"Yes, I'm sure he's a good bird," Clary agreed. "Did you ever see Raziel, the angel? He surely had wings."

They would have preferred some more time to talk to her, an opportunity for an actual conversation, but Baba Agnieszka seemed determined not to give them that. She was herding them out and across the clearing in front of her, if by force of personality and will or by magic, Clary couldn't say. She only knew that she was being moved by an irresistible urge to be back on Aurora and away from this place, in spite of knowing at the same time that that was precisely not what she wanted.

"No," Baba Agnieszka said, her voice growing harsh. "Aveline Montclaire came to me with that same question three hundred years ago. Poor girl. She hadn't found her wings either. Went back home and fell very ill. I think she died." Her voice took on that distant quality again, as did her eyes. "All those birds dead. What a waste. Leave now. Don't come back before you've found them."

"Baba Agnieszka…" Izzy began. She was walking backwards towards Demonsbane, her eyes still on the warlock.

Alec was already back with his horse. He was mounting Thunder, but his motions looked neither fluid nor natural.

"No." The warlock said. "I have nothing to say to you now. Fly, pretty birds. Fly free." Her raven had walked down her arm onto her wrist as she spoke, the large bird balanced there with an ease that seemed impossible. On her last words, she launched it into the air, and the raven took off, shrieking and flapping towards them, claws outstretched.

Clary scrambled into Aurora's saddle, holding on as the horse turned without any aids at all, leaving the clearing at a hurried pace that seemed more disgruntled than fearful. The other three fared no different, though she could see that they were all trying to turn their mounts, or at least regain proper control over them.

Glancing back over her shoulder before the clearing disappeared from sight, Clary saw that Baba Agnieszka was still standing where they had left her, surrounded by a flock of ravens that had not previously been there.

"A glamor", Izzy said. She had turned as well. "Those aren't real birds."

"I've heard of crazy cat ladies," Clary muttered. "But never of a crazy bird lady."

"There's a first time for everything." Jace kept his free arm close to his ribs. He seemed to be in more pain than he had let on earlier. "Did she just tell us to tame ourselves some birds and come back with them?"

"She's definitely into birds," Alec noted. He finally managed to get Thunder to come to a halt. "I think we've reached the edge of her spell. Come here, Jace. Let me put an _iratze_ on that for you."


	27. Chapter 27

"Do you think the Montclaire she mentioned actually existed?" Clary asked. They were sitting together in her and Jace's bedroom, with Jace stretched out on the bed while Alec patiently worked the kinks out of his muscles. They'd made that a regular part of their day, though they'd expanded it a little. Jace wasn't the only one who valued some luxury for his tired body after a day of exercise.

"She existed," Izzy said. "And she fell ill and died, and many after her. Not birds though – Nephilim."

"What?" They were all looking at Izzy, but Clary did not see her confusion reflected in the others' faces.

Isabelle got to her feet and straightened, taking a pose as if lecturing a class. "The Demon Plague of 1698. She was what we'd call patient zero today. The first person recorded to have contracted it. The Plague spread quickly, and it killed a great many Nephilim. Some books say it very nearly drove us to extinction. Alicante must have been almost like a ghost town and people avoided Idris like anything for a few years. It ran its course, spread across the institutes, and eventually it tapered out and those who were left alive gathered and picked up the pieces and continued."

"Oh. I have read about that," Clary said, remembering her brief foray into the history of Shadowhunter diseases. "They never found a cure and barely anyone who fell ill survived?"

Her friend nodded. "Some question that those who survived even had the same thing. The dead were burned, often along with anything that came into contact with them, so as to avoid spreading the disease further, so we don't have any tissues to extract the pathogen from. I can assure you this is something the pathology trainees can go on about for a long time. Everyone has their own theories."

"I remember half a letter written by Valentine mentioning a kind of virus," Alec said, tapping Jace's shoulder. "I'm done for today. My turn now."

"How did it spread?" Clary asked, watching as Jace sat up and pulled himself onto the edge of the bed while Alec slid out of his shirt and took his _parabatai'_ s former place.

"We don't know," Izzy admitted. "If it was airborne, people in the same household would have all fallen ill, but sometimes there were only a few and sometimes there were only one or two who survived out of an entire institute. Contact with bodily fluids is likely from a medical point of view, but unlikely because those nursing the sick seemed to have been no more or less likely to contract it. Then again, there are cases where pockets seemed to spring up in places that had _no_ contact at all with Idris or any affected institute other than by fire message."

"Do you think it may have been borne in the paper?" Clary tried to imagine how exactly fire messages worked. Was the paper that arrived identical to the original, including any contamination it may have contained? Was it a copy? Wouldn't the fire that consumed the page burn out anything clinging to it? Was it even real fire?

"Maybe," Izzy said. "They really didn't know much about how diseases spread back then. But it may also really have been a concerted demon attack, as many believed then, striking in various places. We also have no reliable idea of incubation period or anything. Oh, and those who did survive suffered some permanent mental damage, probably from the long periods of high fever."

She stopped for a moment, as if trying to remember details. "Memory loss was common. Oh – and cutting someone's runes didn't help."

Now Clary was confused again. "Why would cutting anyone's runes help?"

"Sometimes, young Nephilim have a reaction to their first rune," Alec said without lifting his head from his crossed arms as Jace worked on him. "It can last for weeks or months and can be fatal, so some parents will choose to have the rune cut and send their child away to live as a mundane rather than expose them to the risk of trying the runes again."

"Only the first rune?"

"Yes. If the child survives the reaction, any further runes usually take normally. They did for dad."

Clary's eyebrows went up. "Your father had a reaction to his first rune?"

Alec made a sound that was muffled by the arm he was talking against.

"Don't mention it to him," Izzy suggested. "It's still a sore spot for him. It's an embarrassing thing to happen. I don't know what he would have done if it'd happened to any of us."

"Claimed we weren't his," Alec said. He sounded quite certain about it.

"Anyway," Izzy returned them to the topic at hand. "Some people were either naturally immune or for some reason just never caught it. It hasn't turned up ever again after that, which rather supports the demonic influence theory. Or it mutated and is still living among us but as something harmless. We don't know. But Alec is right. Valentine did write of something that worked like a virus." She looked from one to the other, her eyes lingering the longest on Jace, who was uncharacteristically quiet.

He must have felt her gaze on him. "I don't think the Demon Plague was the virus Valentine wrote about."

"Why not?" Clary asked. Just now, it had seemed a logical conclusion for her that if there was any connection at all, that would be it.

"Because 1698 is the date of the last entry in David's journal."

*

_December 18 th, 2016_

"I'll get that!" Izzy called, needlessly because they had already informed Maryse that they were expecting a visitor and that it was probably not the best idea if a stranger to her opened the door.

This time, Tatyana had sent a fire message, though it had been very short and to the point.

_Coming over in 30 min. Need to talk._

Izzy's eyes narrowed as she opened the door, expecting Tatyana and probably either her aunt or uncle, and finding herself face to face with a woman she had never seen before instead.

The haunted way in which she glanced over her shoulder and the way in which she looked at Izzy out of one eye only even though the face she showed had two made her identity clear even before she spoke, however.

"You told me to age up." The manner of speech was unmistakable.

Izzy moved aside, letting the other woman into the house. "You're alone?"

Tatyana shrugged uncomfortably. "I made it alone the first time."

 _You also had a panic attack the first time_ , Izzy thought, but she said nothing about it. She could see it had cost Tatyana to venture out again, and that she was more than just relieved to be within the safety of the house and among friends.

They used Jace's and Clary's bedroom again, where Max was less likely to catch them unawares than in the living room, though this time they assembled around the small table in the corner, rather than the large bed.

Tatyana carefully placed the bag she had slung over one shoulder on the table and tilted it until a box slid out.

"What's that?" Alec asked. The box was cardboard and had once held a game, though that was probably not what it contained now.

Wordlessly, Tatyana lifted the upper part between her hands, exposing a heap of paper, some from a printer, other pages torn from newspapers.

"May I?" Alec asked, one hand reaching out already.

On her nod, he picked up the first few pages.

"I kept it all." Tatyana's words were even harder to understand now because of how quietly she was speaking. "My copies of the investigation files, the newspaper articles, everything that showed up later. Even what never made it public. Never read it. I just … printed it and kept it."

"You never read it?" Alec asked. "Why'd you print it then?"

She gave him a vague gesture. "Just wanted to have it. You know, so I could read it… or not read it… and because I wanted to prove to myself that I could."

"That you could read it?" Alec still was confused, and his expression was mirrored in Jace's and Clary's faces.

"Not read it," Izzy told them instead. "Resist the pull. It's like when I sit next to Rafael even though I don't have to and why it'd be a bad idea for me and him to ever get back together."

Now it was Tatyana who looked utterly confused, and Isabelle leaned back to watch her reaction. "I'm a _yin fen_ addict," she said. "I'm clean, but Rafael is a vampire, and he was my source for a while. I know what it is to prove to myself that I do not _have_ to act on that feeling that I should… or need… you know."

After a few moments, she nodded. "Maybe a little like that."

"Some of these are inquisition documents," Alec noted as he browsed the pages. She _had_ said even what never made it public, but his frown deepened with every page he perused quickly to get an overview of what they had. "How'd you get these?"

Her mouth twitched into a half-smile. "Never lost my status, never lost my access. I'd just scan for his name once a week or so and print whatever came up as new. Most of the time it was nothing."

"They analyzed his blood for demon influences," Alec noted. "About eight years ago. Iz?" He pushed the sheets at his sister, who had a lot more experience in reading lab results than any of them did.

She took them, shuffling them to find the beginning and spending a while studying the charts and comparing values.

"No demon blood," she said. "It seems they ran every single analysis they could think of. They must have really wanted to find some."

"It would have been a good explanation for his behavior," Jace said. "Remember Jonathan?"

"We don't know how much of that was demon blood," Clary cautioned, "and how much was Valentine's upbringing and his banishment to Edom. He lived through ten years of torture, remember? You don't need demon blood to be driven insane by that."

The sudden loss of color in Tatyana's face silenced her.

"If anything," Izzy noted after a moment of silence, "his angel blood values are too high. Nowhere near Jace's or Clary's, but way higher than average. Maybe that’s what made him susceptible to the visions."

"And here is the solution to why the inquisitor's interrogation techniques have 'improved'," Alec said, disgust thick in his voice. "Listen: 'Among the many runes he uses to mark his victims with to prolong their suffering is a single one that we have never seen before. It is not in the Grey Book, and it has been confirmed that it is not among the restricted runes either. If it was not mixed in with the others, we would have assumed it to be a demonic rune that is beyond our understanding or use'." He held up the paper to show them the design of the rune drawn there.

"Upon trying it, it became obvious that it is, indeed, one that we can use. We have named the rune Agony, after the effect that it has. We recommend that its use be restricted to the Inquisitor's office and applied only in dire need of encouraging a witness to speak."

Alec looked as if he was going to be sick any moment. Magnus, while caught in Valentine's body, had been tortured with that very rune, an experience that still haunted him.

Taking the page from his _parabatai'_ s fingers, Jace looked at Tatyana. "You checked for his name about once a week? All this time?" There was nothing accusing or doubting in his tone. Instead, it was interested, almost hopeful.

She nodded.

"So you know when the database was purged?"

Another nod. "After his death. A day after his death. I wanted to know how he died. I would have read that. There was nothing."

"What about the…" Alec gestured at the heap of pages. "Special documents?"

Dark hair that wasn't necessarily part of the glamor flew as she shook her head emphatically. "There's nothing there. Even the inquisition files were purged. They removed everything."

Alec was frowning once again, and this time he directed the expression at their guest. "But when we were at your place – why didn't you tell us then? You were surprised when we told you."

His sister elbowed him in the ribs, just hard enough to be a clear warning. "Just because you can't lie doesn't mean no one else can, big brother."

"But… why?" His expression was almost comical.

Izzy looked at Tatyana. "Your uncle doesn't know, right? About this." She indicated the paper on the table.

The older woman nodded. "He would have worried. More than he already did."

"I'm surprised he let you come on your own," Jace noted.

"I didn't ask permission." She raised her hands defensively when they all turned their attention to her. "I left a note. I needed to be… somewhere else."

"Because of that?" Alec indicated her collection.

"Not just." She took a moment to consider her words. "That place – it's a prison. One I chose for myself, but still a prison. Going out was terrible – but I can't lock myself in another twelve years. I need to … find a way." Her gaze was fixed on Izzy now. "Uncle caught me looking at his weapons today. He said nothing, but it was very clear he hated that. He doesn't think anything can come of it. You talked of training. I'm here."

"You're here," Izzy repeated. "Let us copy these, and then we'll see about the rest."

"Keep them," Tatyana offered. "As payment."

"No." Alec pulled out his phone and tapped the camera icon. "You owe us no payment. You're welcome any time – as a friend."

She stared as he snapped pictures of the pages, forwarding each one to Magnus immediately.

"They make angel-powered cell phones now?"

"They don't." Izzy took out her own and placed it on the table. "These were made by friends. They're more like warlocks than Nephilim sometimes. We're not supposed to have these."

"Then you shouldn't have told me." Tatyana looked down. "I won't betray you on purpose, but …I if anyone questions me …"

She wasn't going to allow another agony rune to be placed on her. Of course not.

"If they ask you, tell them," Jace said. "Let the rest of it be for us to worry about." They wouldn't find a working phone on any of them even if they searched them. Smart phones truly were a blessing at times.

*

They were beginning to wonder if Tatyana's uncle may have been right. It wasn't illogical - He'd watched her for years, after all.

They had relocated to the training room, and spread out so everyone could stay busy.

Jace volunteered as instructor for Clary, while Alec paired off with her to demonstrate and let her try out new moves. That part of it worked out fine.

Izzy's attempt at getting through a set of drill with Tatyana, however, did not.

It didn't seem to matter how much she said she wanted the training, how much Izzy slowed down or how often she announced her attacks – Instead of meeting her in a matching defense, Tatyana invariably recoiled reflexively, her arms raised to shield herself but not in any manner that constituted a sensible defense.

"Break," Izzy said after a while of watching her movements grow increasingly frantic as her breathing sped up and the determination in her look morphed more and more into panic. "We'll try this again later."

Tatyana shook her head. "No. I can't—There must be a way to get through this." She looked at Izzy, pleading silently. "Don't give up on this?"

"I'm not," Izzy said. "But I think we need to find a different approach. Ouch." She winced in sympathy as Clary dropped Alec onto the runed floor.

"Let's just try it once more," Tatyana said. "I'll try to do better. I will do better. I'll remember this is just training."

Suppressing a sigh, Isabelle nodded. She understood the need to be able to defend herself. She thought she understood, at least in theory, the fear of being attacked. She wasn't sure how they'd get through one to achieve the other.

"Alright." Isabelle pointed. "I'm going to attack there. Like this." She made the movement once, bringing her arm around in slow motion while aiming at an invisible opponent. "And you will..?"

Tatyana raised her arm in defense, miming the proper response to the attack.

They faced off. Izzy's motions were barely faster than when she had demonstrated. Now that they were aimed at Tatyana, however, the other woman flinched, jerking back instead of meeting the attack.

"That isn't working," a new voice said from the door.

They turned to look.

Maryse was standing there, a stern expression on her face.

"Mom," Izzy greeted her. "We didn't hear you come in."

"You were a bit busy," Maryse said as she approached. She nodded at Tatyana. "I'm Maryse Lightwood – everyone else's mother or mother-in-law."

Alec used Clary's distraction at that statement to pull out her feet from under her. "Focus on what you're doing – not on being adopted into the family," he told her as he held out a hand to help her up.

Clary took it, and Alec found himself tumbling as instead of rising, she yanked and twisted, bringing him down next to her.

"Don't underestimate your opponent, Alec," Maryse cautioned. "No matter how harmless she looks." She was grinning for a moment, though, before her expression grew more serious again as she turned to Tatyana. "May I give this a try?"

Izzy stepped aside at Tatyana's nod, curiously watching as her mother took her former place.

"You're overthinking," Maryse said. "The moment you start thinking in combat, you're dead. Stop thinking. Start doing."

She wasn't done saying the last words yet when she moved in, her hand shooting out.

Tatyana didn't have time to think or to anticipate. Her arm came up as the combat drill she'd received in the first half of her life took over, and she caught the attack forearm on forearm. Her other arm lashed out, the heel of her hand aimed at Maryse's face.

The moment the other woman shifted to evade, Tatyana's foot hooked around her leg, using that moment of reduced balance to her advantage.

Only as Maryse landed on the floor, rolling and coming back to her feet more than an arm's length away, did Tatyana find the time to look horrified.

"Now that," Maryse said, nodding at her, "is how you do it. That's why you practice drill until it becomes so ingrained you don't _have_ to think."

"I don't—" Tatyana was breathing far more heavily than the exercise she had just gotten warranted. It took her several attempts to calm herself down enough to speak. "I didn't think I still had any of that – muscle memory, I mean. It's been almost thirteen years since the last time I trained."

"But I'm sure you've thought about it," Maryse told her. "Every time you imagined being in the field, every time you dreamed of a mission, every time you thought about what you'd do if someone was to come at you again, you boosted those memories. What's your main weapon?"

Tatyana looked to the ground by her feet. "It was the staff."

"Good weapon," Maryse declared. "Versatile, long reach, effective."

The glamor rippled, shifting over Tatyana's hands as she lifted them. "Not an option anymore."

"Nonsense." Maryse went to the cabinets that held their equipment and rummaged around until she found a pair of long-sleeved fingerless leather gloves. "Put adhesive runes on the palms of these and try."

*

_December 19 th, 2016_

"I don't have to help you, you know," Max said, his tone as gloomy as his face. "I can just go to my room and there's nothing you can do about it."

"That's right," Jace agreed. He was arranging the tools he needed in the kitchen. "But if you ever want your stele back – or the key to the front door – you better rethink that plan. We need two pans and a pot here."

With their agreement, Maryse had taken control of their general morning training. She was, as everyone but Clary remembered, a much stricter trainer than Alec or Izzy, and left all four of them feeling every muscle –with certain limitations in Jace's case. Maryse had always been a relentless instructor, pushing them to stretch their limits with every training session.

The four of them didn't mind.

Their youngest brother had walked in when they'd almost been finished, scowling and staring darkly ahead.

"Why should I train?" he'd asked, stubborn refusal in his voice. "It's not like I'll be sent into the field ever."

"Training is your best shot at getting back into shape so you can be in the field," Alec had told him.

Max had scoffed at that. "Like that would make a difference. I'll still be your brother."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alec asked, just as his mother gave her youngest son a piercing look, accompanied by a sharp: "That is enough, Max."

Max wouldn't be stopped. "You shoot your own people. Who knows how the warlock influenced you? Or maybe you're taking drugs like Iz. You shouldn't be where you can hurt more people." He turned towards Isabelle. "You'll never stop being a _yin fen_ addict. You'll always put your team at risk. You brought Jonathan into the Institute!" He shook his uncooperative hand at her.

Maryse took a step forward. "Max, that _is_ enough," she began, but Alec raised a hand.

"Let him talk," he said quietly. His face was contemplative rather than hurt.

The boy didn't pay any attention to it. He was looking at Jace now. "No matter how much you pretend otherwise, you'll never go anywhere again. You're just a waste of resources now. And you," that was directed at Clary, "mess up everything you touch."

"Max." Maryse had crossed the room and was standing in front of her youngest now. "You will apologize to your siblings - all three of them. And to Clary. Now. And then I never want to hear any such thing from you again."

"I won't!" Max had all but stomped his foot. "It's true! They're all just a disgrace for the family – and so are you!"

Very calmly, Maryse had held out her hand, palm up. "Your stele, Max. Now."

"I don't have to do anything you say! You can't make me!" Max had insisted, but he hadn't quite had it in him to refuse under her glare. He had slammed the stele into her palm, turned on his heel and fled the room, barely dragging his leg at all.

"Where'd that come from?" Izzy had asked when he was gone and a dull slam suggested that he had reached his room.

Their mother sighed. "Robert, possibly. He hasn't said as much to me, but I've heard… similar things from others."

Jace's mouth twitched. "Take note that he doesn't limp when he doesn't think about it. We should make him run laps when he misbehaves. He'll be so busy being mad at us that he won't even notice how quickly he's getting back into shape."

That at least had the desired effect of drawing a laugh from them.

Still, they decided to use the theme of running in a different way for the moment, and Max was informed in no uncertain terms that he was to help Jace make lunch while Maryse took the other three for a training run.

Radiating belligerence, Max slammed the requested items down on the stove.

"Break anything and Maryse will take it out of your allowance," Jace said evenly as he prepared to climb into his usual place for cooking. "Take the potatoes to the sink and start peeling."

"Do you really think your angel blood is going to cure you?" Max asked several minutes into his task.

"Yes," Jace told him. "Some day."

"That's just clinging to a useless hope," Max declared. "You're too old to believe in fairy tales."

Jace studied the kitchen floor for a moment. "It's not something I believe," he said then. "It's something I know." He needed to be that honest at least.

"And what if it won't?" Max prodded further.

For a moment, Jace tried to imagine a situation in which the Gales tried to heal him and failed. It was frighteningly easy. The thought had wormed itself into his mind increasingly often as the date drew nearer. "Then I will continue to train as much as I can, to get every bit out of this body that it is still able to give me." His voice was steady. "The only way I would be wasting resources would be if I gave up on myself."

He hated to imagine a world in which he was forever bound to their home, unable to safely leave an institute without company, left with administrative work on the sidelines. But the point was that he _could_ imagine that future, and it didn't fill him with all-encompassing despair. As long as he had Alec and Izzy and Clary in his life, he'd be able to handle anything.

"I won't like it," he admitted. "But it's doable."

"Do you really not feel your legs at all?" Max asked. He half-turned, studying his foster-brother.

Jace shook his head. "I have a bit of feeling here." He touched the area just below the level of his injury. "But anywhere below that – nothing."

"What if you poured hot water on them?" Now Max sounded interested.

"No," Jace said. "Absolutely not. We're not going to try that, and I wouldn't feel it. But the blood circulation in my legs is worse than it could be because I can't move them, and wounds are harder to heal. I can fix small things with an _iratze_ , but I'm not going to risk anything large just to satisfy scientific curiosity."

"I wasn't going to suggest you try it," Max said darkly, turning back to his work.

A moment later, he looked at Jace again. "What does it feel like when you touch them?"

It took a bit of an effort for Jace not to sigh. "Come here."

Max put his knife aside slowly. "What for?"

"Nothing bad," Jace promised. "Just come here for a moment."

Still hesitating a bit, Max moved until he stood before his brother.

"Give me your hand." Jace held out his, waiting for Max to comply. Then he put the boy's hand on his own knee, palm-down. "This is exactly what it feels like when I touch my legs."

"Like it's someone else's?" Max's eyes were growing wide as he studied his other hand. "I feel some. Not as good as with the other but at least I feel it's _there_."

"You can also move it some," Jace pointed out. "Who can tell what you can get out of it if you keep exercising? Make sure your body knows you still need that hand and it better get busy and re-establish contact properly." He pointed at the boy's previous workplace. "And you can start with that, because those potatoes won't peel themselves."

"Jace?" Max said after another while of working in silence.

"Yes?"

There was a pause as the boy hesitated. "Those things I said? I didn't mean that. I didn't make that up either. But I heard people say them."

Jace gave him an encouraging nod. "We thought as much. Want to tell me who?"

"Some was Aldertree." Max said, adding with some passion: "I hate the man."

That brought a chuckle from Jace. "We all do. And the rest?"

Max looked past him as if afraid of watching Jace's reaction to his next word. "Dad."

"I don't know why Robert is saying – or doing – the things he says and does right now," Jace said without interrupting his work. "But he's had some things to say to us, too… along the same lines."

"He didn't say it to me."

"You eavesdropped." It wasn't even a question, but Jace tried to keep any accusation out of his statement.

Max shrugged. "He told someone it wasn’t his fault – that it was all mom's influence that we'd all turned out badly. And that he wouldn't make that mistake again. He hates us, Jace."

"Now, I'm sure he doesn't _hate_ us," Jace tried, though he wasn't entirely convinced of the truth of that.

"He does." Max brought the bowl with the peeled potatoes over and put it down hard enough that Jace thought he was lucky the ceramic didn't crack. "He said he should have been put in charge of getting you out of the way. That he would have made sure it was quick and efficient and you wouldn't have had a way to wind yourselves out of it again. The other guy laughed and said you were too big for him to take on. Especially you. Even…" He swallowed and bit his lip briefly. "Even as a cripple."

"I've been called worse," Jace claimed, feeling the need to console Max somehow. "Was the other guy Aldertree?"

The boy shook his head. "I don't know his name. I never saw him before. He was around the institute on and off the last few weeks."

"What did he look like?" Jace had a feeling that he'd know the answer. He suddenly felt cold even though he was sitting right next to the working stove.

Closing his eyes, Max focused. "Taller than dad, blond, short hair." His face wrinkled up in something like disgust. "He looked like he was trying to grow a beard. Like you four years ago. Just older."

"Careful," Jace said, "thin ice." He was smiling, though, and it was audible in his voice. He didn't want Max to know just exactly how much he dreaded hearing more of that description.

"Well, it's true," Max insisted. "And he had _enkeli_ runes. Like everywhere. Up his arms. On the side of his neck." He was watching Jace now, and the twitch in his face didn't remain unnoticed. "You know him."

"I know _of_ him," Jace admitted. "I've never met him in person. He's a dangerous man. Max, promise me that you will never, under any circumstances, follow that man, spy or eavesdrop on him or do anything else that might lead to him getting his hands on you. No – I want that on oath from you. Because if that man ever gets his hands on you, you're dead, and I can promise you, it will be slow and it will be painful."

Something in his voice got the message through. Max paled a few shades and nodded, a little shakily. "I swear I won't. I don't have my stele, so I can't _confirm_ it, but I swear I won't go anywhere near him if I see him again."

"Make sure you're _never_ alone where he might get at you. Always stay with someone else – someone else who's not Robert. Do you understand?"

Max's answer was barely audible. "I understand."

"Good." Jace finally got around to cutting the potatoes into the pan. "Here, watch this and don't let it burn."

To his surprise, Max complied. Several minutes passed before he spoke again. "Jace?"

"Yes?" Was there _more_?

"If I had dad's access credentials for the Shadowhunters' Network, would you want them?"

Jace blinked. "How by the angel did you get at Robert's access credentials?"

"I didn't say I had them, I said if I had them…" There was a ghost of a grin on Max's face.

He got an eye-roll for that. "If you already had them, they need to go to Alec," Jace decided. "He's our commander."


	28. Chapter 28

Maryse looked around as Clary let them into the house.

"This is like travelling back in time," she said as she turned slowly. "It's exactly how it was."

"Not exactly," Clary corrected. "We've been removing smaller pieces from the house, so some inventory is missing."

"We would meet here sometimes," Maryse told them. "Or actually quite a lot. Your parents lived with your grandparents in the manor, mostly, but Jocelyn had set up her studio in here. She said she loved being able to just run a few streets to get more supplies, but I think she really wanted to be away from her parents. Or maybe Valentine wanted to be away from her parents and convinced her."

Walking down the corridor, she glanced into the rooms, a lot less dusty now than they had been the first time they'd come here.

"This is the first I have ever heard that they didn't get along," Clary noted, following.

"Oh, they did get along," Maryse continued. "Your grandparents liked Valentine well enough. It was most of the rest of us they didn't like." She turned, looking at the three who had come with her. "You know – the boy who almost didn't survive his first rune; the girl whose brother had been deruned and banished because he wanted to marry a mundane; timid little Céline; the Herondale boy who just ran with us from the lesser families because his parents were stifling him."

Izzy and Clary lowered their eyes to the floor, intently studying the toes of their boots, while Alec bit his lips and tried to wipe away the expression on his face with one hand.

"That seems a common theme in Herondales," he noted after a moment.

"Jace doesn't think of you as from a lesser family," Maryse corrected him.

"No," Alec agreed. "But he did find living with Imogen quite stifling."

"Some people just can't change the way they work," his mother said. It sounded a bit like a sigh. "In any case, they ended up spending quite some time here, and by extension, so did we. We'd meet in the parlor to socialize and in Val's study upstairs to plot. Sometimes we'd hang around Jocelyn's studio while she worked, and she'd pose us and use us as life-sized dummies for her compositions." She was smiling at the memory. "There's a small room off this corridor at the very end. No idea what it was for originally, but it wasn't used for anything particular at the time. Valentine and Jocelyn … didn't exactly try to set us up with someone, but they definitely created opportunities. They wanted us to have ties within the Circle."

Alec frowned. "Mom, are you saying…?"

"That Robert and I did quite some getting to know each other in that room, yes." Maryse didn't look the least bit abashed – and why should she? Robert was the man she had married. It was hardly her fault that he hadn't turned out to be anyone's dream husband.

"Who else was part of that group back then?" Isabelle asked. "The man under the Nightshade face claimed he was an old friend of Valentine's or Jocelyn's when he talked to Clary's neighbors. He wouldn't have been playing the Nightshade role then – surely _he_ was much too young for Valentine to notice."

"Actually," Maryse said, "he could have. She was walking towards the stairs now. "Did you…?" She mimed scanning the walls through a phone, the way they had shown her how they had found the bugs in the Lightwood house."

Alec nodded immediately. "Yes. The house is clear."

"What do you know about your grandmother, Clary?" Maryse went on as she started to climb the stairs, walking slowly and carefully, testing the creaking wood just as the three of them had the first time they'd been in the house. "Your mother's mother?"

"Her name was Adele," Clary said. "It's my middle name. Valentine killed her and my grandfather when he faked his death the first time."

Maryse's next words brought her to a sudden halt. "She was Adele Nightshade before she married."

All three were staring at her. They hadn't known that. The Lightwood siblings' eyes met, both seeing their thoughts reflected in the other's face. They should have gone back farther and seen where his family connected.

But why would they have done that? They'd had no reason to suspect Nightshade actually tied in with Valentine somehow.

"Little Nicky was your mother's baby cousin. He'd be at the Fairchild manor now and then, and he kind of worshiped Valentine. Just like everyone."

Clary was still digesting that, but Alec had taken his thoughts one step farther. "Did Valentine experiment on him?"

"No," Maryse said decisively. "They would have found something when they analyzed his blood."

"They did find something," Izzy said. They hadn't had a lot of time to talk about the news they'd received the night before and they'd put it off. The Nightshade documents weren't going to run away and they weren't of acute relevance – For the moment, their most likely theory was that the only thing about Nightshade that mattered was that he was dead and hadn't left much of a paper trail in the last twelve years, which made his face reasonably safe to use. A glamor surely could be taken from a cleaned-up corpse well enough.

Why he wasn't just using some mundane was still beyond them, but maybe whoever was beneath that face found only a Nephilim face worthy of being worn by him, and was connected well enough to be provided with one.

That alone was a frightening thought.

Maryse looked at her daughter, her eyebrows raised. "Robert inquired when they analyzed his blood. He returned with the firm information that no traces of demon blood were found in Nightshade's body. It was a relief – when we heard who'd been behind those murders, wondering if Valentine had created that monster somehow – if we'd had a part in that somehow – wasn't exactly something we could help."

"We have the lab printouts in yesterday's papers," Isabelle told her. "It's true. There's no demon blood in him."

"But he was either born with an unusually high ratio of angel blood, or someone spiked him with it," Alec added.

Clary was finally moving again. "And we know Valentine had a captive angel. We just don't know since when."

"I can't help with that," Maryse said, shuddering involuntarily at the thought. "I think if any of us had found out about the angel, we wouldn't have stuck with him for another minute." There was the tiniest hint of a doubt in her voice. Valentine had managed to talk them into anything he wanted them to do, painting it for them in words that made it seem like they were doing the _right_ thing just as Jocelyn painted in oils.

They had reached the top of the stairs, and she turned into the study immediately. The room was all but stripped, with only the furniture remaining.

"We took everything he had in here," Alec explained. "Sorted through it, checked all the books for notes or anything between the pages. The only thing of interest was that drafted letter."

His mother nodded. "But there's something in here that isn't meant to be found easily." She slid into the chair in front of the bare desk and placed her hands against the underside of the tabletop, fingers carefully probing the carvings that ran up the sides of the table and continued sideways, forming a web that bore the smooth top. "I saw him use this only twice, and neither time was because I was meant to see it, so give me a moment…"

Eventually, her fingers found a bit that moved, folding upwards like the pin of a brooch pushed from its bracket. She moved her hand to catch the small piece of wood in her palm as it fell.

She held it up, revealing a wooden pin about three inches long, topped with the ornate carving of a set of leaves and blossoms.

A few quick steps brought her to the wall where the bookshelf was. The plaster and paint were clearly old and hadn't been redone in a long time. There were cracks running up and down the wall where the shelves were anchored to it.

They watched as Maryse placed the tip off the pin in one of those cracks, running along it until it found a hole and slid in deeper.

She pressed it in with her thumb when she hit resistance, and it took only a moment before she felt something give and heard the silent click of a mechanism disengaging.

A section in the back wall of the shelf had sprung open, revealing the door to a secret compartment behind it that had been fitted so well into the structure of the wood that it was all but indistinguishable from its surroundings even if one knew what one was looking for.

Sliding her fingernails into the thin gap, she teased it open all the way.

There wasn't much in the compartment: the only thing it held was a small bundle of letters that they took out.

There were no envelopes. These had been fire messages, kept by the recipient, precisely folded and placed where they were safe from prying eyes.

Alec unfolded the first, taking note of the calligraphy. He'd seen that style – though not the precisely same hand – not too long ago.

 _My dear Mr. Morgenstern_ , the missive began. _Our sincere congratulations to your recent success. Be assured that, while there can be no official mention, your work is valued._

"The Consul's Office," he read out the signature.

Izzy had taken another letter. "My dear Mr. Morgenstern," she read. "We have read your report with great interest. Find enclosed a list of possible targets for your next missions. May we suggest that you encourage your soldiers…" She only scanned the rest of the page. "The Consul's Office."

"Congratulations on the raid on the New York Institute. Let it be a reminder to everyone who believes they can let their guard down and grow complacent." Maryse looked pale. "The Consul's Office."

"Valentine never worked in isolation," Alec concluded as he scanned the rest of the messages. "He was part of a larger plan. Why'd anyone do that?"

"Because a common enemy creates cohesion," Clary said, her voice low. "Just as they told us."

Alec folded the letters up and dropped the bundle into his bag. "If these were what our Nightshade was after – and I'm suspecting it was – he must have been someone who was close to Valentine. How many from the inner circle at the time are still around?"

Maryse's lips thinned. "Two," she said. "Everyone else is dead. It's still possible that he told someone from his new circle. After all, some who were only involved at the fringes before flocked to him when he reappeared."

"But if it's not one of those…" Izzy began.

Alec covered his face with his hands for a moment. "Then the person under the Nightshade glamor must be our father."

*

"No," Jace told them as they presented their theory to him. "Can't be."

"Why's that?" Alec asked. There was a certainty in Jace's voice that went far beyond a mere refusal to believe what he didn't want to be true.

Jace shifted uncomfortably where he sat. "Because Max saw them both together."

"He did _what_?" Maryse put her cup down so hard some of the coffee spilled over its edge. "Where? When?"

"Sorry," Jace said. "This isn't how I wanted to tell you. It appears that Max used the times that Aldertree sent you away on missions to spy on Robert. Seems that whoever you left to keep an eye on him wasn't very thorough."

Anger sparkled in their mother's eyes – though the precise target wasn't clear.

"It gets worse." He didn't look at Maryse as if he, rather than Max had been the one who had misbehaved. "Apparently he stole Robert's access credentials."

Maryse's eyes narrowed. "The Nightshade person?" She asked, confused for a moment.

"Max," Jace corrected. "He offered them to me and I told him he had to stick with the chain of command and give them to Alec."

"Oh great!" Alec said, his tone and the way he rolled his eyes suggesting his true meaning. "Just pass on anything you don't want to deal with to Alec. He'll take care of it."

His sister gave a laugh at his expression. "The perks of being in command, big brother. Get used to them."

*

_December 20 th, 2016_

"I should take a picture of this and send it to Magnus," Izzy said, grinning as she watched her brother and his _parabatai_.

Alec was down on one knee in front of Jace, their hands clasped tightly over the strand of blond hair. The attempt at tracking their find was something they continued daily, though their hopes of actually getting any results dropped with every day that passed.

Alec laughed. "Go ahead. He'll never believe it if you tell him I'm proposing to Jace or anything."

"I could tell him you're practicing your proposal to him," Izzy suggested instead.

Jace gave her a doubtful look. "I think that should be more flamboyant and not involving another guy's hair," he noted.

"Can you actually focus?" Alec asked, increasing the pressure of his hand on his _parabatai'_ s to draw his attention to where it should have been.

Turning his eyes back to Alec, Jace complied.

The thin strand was brittle between their palms, almost ready to fall apart. Who could know how old these few hairs were? The tiny knot of the string of yarn they'd used to hold them together felt impossibly large, a disturbance that shouldn't even matter…

He was just shoving it from his mind deliberately, focusing only on the main task at hand, when he felt it.

"I've got him."

His own words were mirrored in Alec's, spoken at the same moment.

It wasn't much. It was more of a sense of a vague direction than an actual bearing, but it was more than they had had before. Much more.

"Let's get the horses," Alec said after another moment. "We need to get closer to get a better sense of where he is. Bows, too. We're not going anywhere near that man unarmed."

They probably shouldn't have gone any closer to begin with, but none of them objected. They needed to at least know who they had been trying to track all this time.

"Clary and I will get the weapons," Izzy suggested. "You can saddle up in the meantime."

Alec nodded. Jace was much faster and more maneuverable than he had been, but getting into the house, collecting everything and getting back out was going to cost time anyway – and he still was the one who found it the easiest to help him when they came across an obstacle he couldn't manage on his own. If they wanted to lose as little time as possible, Izzy's division of tasks worked the best.

Within half an hour, they were armed and mounted.

Alec and Jace repeated their attempt at tracking, finding that the signal had not grown any stronger than it had been – but at least it also hadn't disappeared entirely again.

"That way," Alec pointed, checking to see if Jace confirmed his impression.

"Huh." Izzy turned Demonsbane to take the rear. Clary got along well enough with Aurora, but she wasn't going to risk losing her on the way. "I expected we were going to ride back to Wayland Manor."

They hadn't been out that way since their first excursion. Clary hadn't demanded that they actually visited what remained of the Fairchild manor, and none of them had offered. Some day, surely, they were going to go back there and explore what hid behind the walls of the Wayland home, but by silent agreement they were putting it off. Jace was the only one of them who knew the inside of the place. It made sense to wait with any such plans until Jace would actually be able to dismount and lead their foray.

Aiming for the straightest line they could, given the way the streets and alleys of Alicante ran, brought them to the city walls, where they found the closest gate. They continued on until they were out of sight of the gatekeeper.

There, Alec turned Crusader off the path and stopped. "Jace?" He pulled out the strand again. "Let's check our bearings."

The signal continued weak, but steady. They still only got a rough direction, but it was something they could follow.

They went on in this manner, taking the horses down the path they were on at a brisk trot, stopping after ten minutes for another round of tracking.

"I think he's stationary," Alec said when they were about an hour out. "We're getting closer, though it's still a way to go… but I don't think he's moving. Not enough that it'd make a difference for the tracking in any case."

"Which families live out that way?" Clary asked. "Maybe he's just enjoying a nice, quiet day at home, whoever he is." That would have been nice – it would have made him less likely to be tied into anything unpleasant, the hair caught in the shortcut a mere coincidence.

The other three shook their heads as one. "We're riding right towards Brocelined Forest. Pretty much the only ones who live there permanently are Downworlders. But there are huts, as you know. Cottages. Hunting lodges."

"You think he's out to go hunting?" Clary asked, shuddering suddenly as she thought of the deer he might be chasing- or worse.

"We need to consider the possibility," Alec confirmed. "In which case we need to be careful we don't turn into game today." He reached to adjust his bow, making sure he could get at both it and his arrows easily. Jace followed suit.

Clary did her best to imitate them. They had given her some archery lessons, but she didn't think she would be able to hit anything from a horse. Certainly not a moving target and most definitely not one that would shoot back.

Izzy smiled at her when she noticed. "We'll stay back," she said. "Let the two better archers take care of anything that needs to be taken care of. Our best chance would be to make a run for home."

Suddenly, Clary felt very much as if she wanted a faster horse than good old Aurora.

"I don't think anyone will try to attack us," Alec told them reasonably. "If it was one or two of us, yes. But with all four – they'd have to be very certain that they can take out all of us. If even one gets away to report, that'd be the end of them."

"Unless the one we're tracking is also getting letters from the Consul's office." Izzy glanced at Clary, fully aware that she wasn't contributing to putting her friend at ease, but feeling a need to add her caution. "In which case the one getting away would probably silently disappear somewhere."

"Or not so silently," Jace agreed.

Alec stopped Thunder and looked at each of his companions in turn. "We can still turn around. We don't _have_ to do this. We probably _shouldn't_ be doing this. I'm okay if we just go home and call this a leisure ride."

They hesitated to answer, and Clary realized that they were really only waiting to see what she thought. She would have liked to take him up on his offer. She knew he meant it. They wouldn't hold it against her if she didn't want to continue on. But Alec and Jace surely would come back on their own later – and she didn't think she herself would be happy to know that they'd been this close to knowing what they had been trying to track all this time, only to not go through with it when they had the chance.

"I'll go on if you do," she said, setting her face in a determined expression. "We've made it this far – let's make it the rest of the way."

Isabelle nodded at her. "In that case, I'm in."

"Me, too," Jace said, grinning with more bravado than he felt. "Can't let you go on alone, and you need me for the tracking anyway."

They fell into their formation again, continuing their pattern of riding and tracking.

The signal was growing stronger steadily now, until either of them could have tracked it on his own. They continued to work together, however, making full use of every boost they could get.

"We're headed for Lake Lyn," Jace noted eventually. They had left the path and were cutting through the forest now, the horses going at a slow pace as they picked their way through stones and roots. Everyone but Jace had dismounted, walking alongside to reduce the risk of accidents. There would be no quick escapes from here anyway. They couldn't gallop on this kind of terrain.

Izzy was leading Thunder along with Demonsbane, leaving Alec's hands free for his weapon. He kept scouting ahead, running a little way to check what was before them and returning every once in a while.

"I'd be just as happy to never see that place again," Clary declared. Aurora prodded her with her muzzle, as if trying to tell her that there was nothing to be worried about.

It did draw a smile from her as she gave the velvety fur a quick caress.

"We can _still_ go back," Jace noted. "I'm not too keen on going back there either."

"No." They were far too close now. They hadn't turned around for fear of being targeted by whoever they were tracking – she wasn't going to turn back now for a _lake_. "I want to know now. How far from Lake Lyn are the closest cottages- or lodges, or whatever?"

Jace shrugged. "I think we've been there. Valentine's cottage probably is the closest – or at least the closest Shadhowhunter one. Maybe there are werewolves or vampires who have dens closer – or even the odd Seelie. They use the water from the lake, you know."

"I guess it isn't poisonous for them." Clary shuddered as she remembered her first encounter with Lake Lyn, and the effects of having swallowed some of its water.

"That's not where we're headed, though," Jace continued. "We'd have to be moving far more east for that. We seem to be heading right towards the lake."

"I'm not going inside the lake again." That was a line she was definitely going to draw.

"He wouldn't survive being inside the lake for too long." Izzy clearly intended to be the voice of reason in their conversation. "Worst case, he'll be trying to emulate Valentine and try to call up another angel – which won't work because he won't have two of the moral instruments."

"Right." Jace didn't sound convinced. "Because whoever wrote to 'Dear Mr. Morgenstern' couldn't have given them to whoever it is? I say we take no chances."

"One of us should learn to use blow darts so we can shoot tranquilizers at people." Izzy was only half joking. "Or else we should call Charlie next time and ask her to come along. She could put anyone to sleep."

"We're inside a forest." Alec had just returned to them once again. "We can call Charlie and ask her to drop by because we need the extra backup."

They looked back and forth mutely for a few seconds.

Eventually, Izzy sighed. "I'd like to, but I don't want to. I don't want her to think we're just calling her when we need her as a bard, and I don't want to keep imposing on her – on them – without giving anything back."

That brought her a raised eyebrow from Jace. "I thought you were giving back to her quite nicely, those nights she didn't go home."

"That's different," Izzy claimed.

They had reached the edge of the trees overlooking the lake, and Alec reached for Thunder's reins again. "Let's ride while we're in the open," he suggested. "He must be here somewhere."

Once they had all climbed back into their saddles and adjusted their weapons, they approached, cautiously moving towards the lake. The horses felt their riders' apprehension, stepping forward with slow, measured strides.

"Where is he?" Clary's voice was barely above a whisper as she looked around. She saw Alec sketch a charm on his eyelids and turn slowly, scanning the area around the lake.

They were alone.

Alec pulled the strand of hair out again, focusing for a moment before turning around. "Jace?"

His _parabatai_ met him half-way. Once more, they clasped hands around the object.

"I don't understand," Jace muttered. "Going by this, we're basically on top of him."

Alec looked at him, at their hands, and then down. "What if we _are_ on top of him?"

"You mean he's buried here somewhere?" Clary asked, frowning. Moments ago, they'd been prepared to meet a dangerous person and possibly have to defend themselves. Suddenly, the idea that their target might no longer be alive at all felt just as bad – but in an entirely different manner.

"That's not what I meant," Alec said. "But this area is riddled with caves. Do we have any idea what's below here?"

To his visible surprise, Jace nodded. "I do."

"Tell?" Alec looked as if he was trying to remember if he had ever read anything about the precise location of the cave systems.

Jace sighed. "The Silent City. Going by David's journal, we're are right on top of the physical location of the core of the Silent City."

Alec put the blond strand away. "Let's go home then," he said. "And let's assume he's beyond our reach. Whatever he's doing _there_ , we can't waltz in and demand answers. Not if we want to come back out again."

They'd been raised to trust the Silent Brothers. Not too long ago, they would have tried to convince themselves that it would be perfectly safe to pay them a visit and ask them for information.

Reading David's journal had changed that.

None of the others objected as Alec wheeled Thunder and headed back towards Alicante, using the paths this time instead of cutting through the trees.

*

_December 21 st, 2016_

"This is wrong," Clary announced as she put down her book.

"What's wrong?" The reading Izzy had assigned her for the day was a section from a book on downworlders, tracking the history of werewolves and vampires from the time of their creation to the First Accords.

Clary leaned back on the sofa and held up the book, the pages turned towards her teacher. "It says here that the first documented werewolf sighting was in 1238."

"So?" Izzy hadn't even remembered that the book gave that precise a date. "We mostly just remember '13th century'. Most people won't ever need a date that specific in the field. What's wrong with it?"

The look her friend gave her suggested that it should be obvious. "That pretty werewolf in the pathology museum? The one Sophie calls the werewolf prince? It's labeled 1232."

"You remembered that?" Izzy didn't think she'd ever paid enough attention to the label on that case, though she'd spent time admiring the creature behind the glass, of course. Even if she had, with only the century in mind, she wouldn't have noticed.

Clary shrugged. "I was planning to ask Luke if he'd ever heard of a werewolf like that.

"It's been a long time since twelvehundred thirty-something," Izzy mused. "One of the dates may have been copied incorrectly at some point."

"I guess." Clary turned the pages of her book, scanning the text. "I was just thinking again about how different that wolf looked."

"Maybe it really was a very, very early mutation that was drowned out by the main line we know today," Izzy suggested. "That's what most people assume, I think."

"But it could be something entirely different, too?"

"If it is, there's no other one mentioned anywhere I have ever heard or seen." Izzy leaned forward, resting her arms on the table, as she continued. "It'd have to be either a Seelie or something entirely unknown to us today. If it was a demon, it would have disintegrated when killed. The preservation spells warlocks put on some demon bits would be… extremely difficult to put on an entire body. Especially since it'd have to be on the body before it was killed, and what demon would permit that?"

"We could ask Elessar tomorrow," Clary suggested. "If he's there. Maybe he could give some input on the Seelie angle."

Her friend nodded. "That we can definitely do. Speaking of tomorrow – do make sure Jace gets some sleep tonight? I think he's more nervous about the entire thing than he's letting on.


	29. Chapter 29

_December 22 nd, 2016_

"Behave," Alec told his phone sternly as he handed it over to his mother.

Maryse opened it, nodding at the screen. "Works."

"Alright then. Every half hour, and we'll jump back to the last message we get on the way home."

That was what they had agreed on to make their trip to Calgary as safe as possible: Maryse would text Jace from Alec's phone at regular intervals while nothing unexpected happened. Should visitors come calling or anyone notice their absence, she would simply stop messaging.

The four of them were going to spend the day and at least part of the night in Calgary, celebrating the solstice together with the Gales after the aunties finished their work on Jace. At the end of it, Charlie would return them to the time of Maryse's last text message, which would make them non-absent when it counted.

"Can you really do that?" they'd asked Charlie when she had laid out her plan. "Don't you need a mark for the exit point?"

She had nodded. "It'd make it easier, but since it's just a few hours, I can count backwards from the time we have then. It'll be fine." She'd laughed as she had studied their faces one by one. "Trust me! I know what I'm doing."

They didn't doubt that. Still, the entire concept of casual time-travel was something they were still getting used to.

*

Charlie brought them out on the Gales' roof terrace easily, driving home the time difference immediately: It was only mid-morning here.

Alec picked up Jace at the top of the stair to carry him down the steps, where he waited for Clary to bring the wheelchair so Jace could enter the flat on his own.

Allie rushed to meet them immediately, distributing long, tight hugs that left no doubt that she considered this a coming-home event.

Clary pulled a rolled-up canvas from her hold-all bag and handed it over.

"Oh," Allie said. "Your personal entrance?"

"If you don't mind." Clary looked a little uncertain. "You don't have to put it up in the apartment. I can arrive somewhere else and knock, just like Charlie comes from the roof."

"Nonsense!" Allie unrolled the canvas, looking at the painting of a grassy hill under a moonlit night sky. The scene was dominated by a magnificent white stag royally presiding over its range, its fur reflecting the moonlight in a way that looked as if the painting itself should be enough to light up a dark room.

She stared, amazement and delight warring in her features. "This is perfect, Clary!" There was pure joy in her exclamation. "Wait until David sees this! And I think there's the perfect frame downstairs, too! We got it in just this week, and I was wondering. I think we should put it there." She pointed at a stretch of wall next to the corridor that led from the living room towards the extra bedrooms. It had previously held various decorations, but had been cleared recently – considering that no one had bothered to fix the holes or paint over the wall yet, it had probably been very recent.

In other words: relying on Gale Luck, Allie had made space for the very painting she had just received, trusting that it would fit where she wanted to put it.

"In your living room?" Clary asked, her voice uncertain. "I mean – It'd surely look good there, but if we're to use it as an entrance – do you really want us just to drop in here?"

"Of course!" Allie assured her. "Look – the only reason Charlie arrives on the roof is that having a flower bed large enough in here doesn't work and she doesn't much like to go through sounds when she doesn’t have to. You're all welcome to show up in this living room any time you need something – a place to stay, help, advice, or just a break and a good time! Or for any other reason."

Allie's older set of twins had realized in the meantime that there were visitors and had come over, giving a yelp of delight when they saw who had arrived. Edward launched himself at Alec, while Evan, with only a fraction of a second's hesitation, simply climbed into Jace's lap to present his new toy to him.

"I see Boris has been around again," Jace noted as he examined the plush minotaur. "I really want to meet him some day."

Katie laughed. She was standing in the kitchen, cleaning up the last residues of the Gales' breakfast. "Now, I don't think he'll show up while he fears you might mistake him for one of your demons and try to kill him."

"We'd never do that!" Izzy said. "I'm not even sure what a minotaur is. My first guess might have gone towards warlock rather than demon…"

"Seelie?" Jace suggested. "They come in some odd shapes. But anyway, do tell Boris he's not in any danger from any of us unless he attacks us first."

"Will do," Allie promised. "But he's really kind of shy."

That got her some incredulous looks. The concept of a shy minotaur was not something that went down easily.

"Well, Jonathan?" Auntie Bea asked from where she was still sitting at the dining table with her fellow aunties. "Do you want to get the work out of the way first thing, or would you rather have some time to relax first?"

Jace made a face at the name. The aunties always insisted on using full names. For the Gales, it was a way of marking which age-set people belonged to. "Right away if you don't mind," he said. "I'd… like to know it's taken care of."

"Very well." All four of them rose from their chairs.

"Katie, can you take the boys to play somewhere? They'd just get in the way if they keep climbing all over people," Auntie Carmen asked.

With a nod, Katie came over to collect both twins, while Allie deftly converted one of the sofas into its bed-version.

"It'll be best if you're as relaxed as possible, which will be easier if you're lying down," she explained.

Jace crossed the distance to the sofa, shifting over quickly.

"Why do you even need this done?" Auntie Trisha asked, though her tone made clear that she wasn't serious about it. "You're getting by just fine as you are!"

Jace gave her a lopsided grin. "Only until I meet a set of stairs, Auntie Trisha," he told her. "Or freshly fallen snow. Or a situation where I need to run after – or from – someone. So if you don't mind…"

"Of course not," Bea told him, her tone determined. "Let's get to it. Are you nervous?"

To everyone's surprise, Jace nodded. "Yes," he admitted, not even trying to hide it. He slid out of his boots and lifted his feet onto the sofa one by one before working his way towards the middle.

"Try not to worry," the old woman told him, her expression unusually soft. "We have fixed worse."

Charlie rolled her eyes behind her Auntie's back. "Yes. We all know about the time I was crushed by a troll. Did I have any spinal injuries?"

"I find it worrying that you never asked about how badly you were hurt," Auntie Bea told her with a sniff. "You had several crushed vertebrae and considerable damage to your spinal cord."

"I felt battered enough when I woke up," Charlie replied evenly. "I didn't need to know how much worse I could have been feeling."

"You'll forgive me if I do find that reassuring," Jace told her. He let his upper body drop backwards, only to push himself back up again after a moment to take his jacket off and toss it onto the now-abandoned wheelchair. Then he hesitated, one hand on his t-shirt. "Should I take this off, too?"

Auntie Trisha raised an eyebrow at him. "By all means, if you're more comfortable without, go ahead. We won't mind."

Carmen, standing by her side, shook her head. "We're going to work through your skin and muscle and everything else we don't have to touch. We'll be able to work through a thin layer of cotton. Leave it on – it'll pose less of a _distraction_ to the younger ones among us."

Trisha glowered at her. None of the Calgary Aunties looked as if she was a day under sixty-five.

Suddenly, Jace was feeling a bit of a déjà vu, remembering that other time he had been stretched out on this very sofa bed, with the aunties working on him. It wasn't a memory he enjoyed. "Will I need someone to hold me again?"

"In theory – no," Auntie Bea told him. "But if it helps to keep you comfortable and still, there's no reason why not."

Alec had taken half a step towards Jace, though he waited for an invitation to approach any further.

Jace gave it another moment's thought. Once, he would have laughed at himself for even considering it. Now, strangely, his position alone at the focus of everyone's attention made him feel exposed. Bea had talked about keeping him still… Maybe it was going to be easier not to shift around if he had help. He wasn't going to risk ruining his back in order to satisfy his pride –or the pride that he would have had three months ago. Today, he wasn't even sure if insisting to go through anything alone was something to be proud of in the first place.

"Alec?" he asked, forcing a casual tone. "Would you mind a lot? I wouldn’t want to twitch at the least opportune moment."

Smiling, his _parabatai_ came over. "Sure."

"Thanks." Jace watched him untie his boots and take position so he could lean back against him, relaxing into the safe circle of Alec's arms.

"You'd to the same for me."

That much was true.

His eyes found Clary's, and he didn't even have to ask. She came over to sit by his side, reaching for his hand. All three of them turned their attention to Izzy, and it was only a moment before she joined them.

They were gathered in the same way they had been that other time now, though the situation felt entirely different. Then, it had been tense, an emergency procedure of unknown consequences at that moment. Their proximity had been necessary, but also uncomfortable. Now, it felt natural.

*

Bea, too, was comparing the situation to that day when they had freed Jonathan from the magical ties someone or something had attached to him – the precise purpose of which they had never found out.

At the time, she'd seen four solitary, lost young people, and it had taken all her self-restraint to not forcefully bind them to the family then and there. No one should have been that alone.

Then, Jonathan had been entirely without protection from magical attacks, since he had lost the shield he had once had, and no one had bothered to renew it – or even realized that there was anything to renew.

They had been each on their own, their essences touching only at the outer-most edges as if afraid that permitting any kind of deeper contact would shatter them. It was as far from the way the Gales twined and fitted around each other as anything could be.

Now, just two months later, they meshed easily. Their cores fitted against each other, leaving no space for anything to separate them. The shields Charlie had given them that day flowed together where they touched, strengthening each other and forming one solid layer that encompassed them all.

If one of them lost their shields now, all they would have to do to regain them would be to return to their family, soaking up protection from the others.

Her own family gathered around her, the three other first circle members taking their places and Alysha settling to feed them power. She was going to make sure that what they got would remain controlled, even though they would be drawing on the extra energy the day's alignments afforded them.

Charlie had started to pick a tune, a relaxing melody that was meant to put Jonathan at ease while also keeping any excess energy from leaking out of the room and disturbing anything – such as Gwen's potions in the apartment next door.

As she had gathered from the information the young man had sent them, Jonathan's back around the injury was a mess of various energies, lying on top of each other and easily separable in some places, but mixing and forming what to her perception looked and felt like vile clots of something rancid in others. Those were the effects of the adamas radiation, demon ichor and runes, all applied to the same location. They'd have to clean that away before they could do anything else.

Shaping the power she was fed into a tiny flame, she touched it to the outer-most fringe where the interferences were protruding the farthest into Jonathan 's body.

She could feel her target sizzle under her flame, though Jonathan didn't seem to sense anything of it. Even his eyes remained calmly closed, not a single twitch suggesting that the treatment was hurting him.

They worked in silence, clearing out the contamination bit by bit, two of them wielding the magical flames while the other two kept up barriers to prevent what remained from spreading out again into the tissues they had just cleansed.

Only when they were sure of their work, every last remnant of power that wasn't either theirs or Jonathan's own gone, did they turn their attention towards the injury. They worked more slowly now, proceeding with the utmost care.

The power she was wielding had the shape of a sharp needle, the tip dissipating scar tissue particle by particle where it touched.

It turned out to be very slow work. They had to clean away just enough, but wanted to avoid touching even the smallest bit of healthy tissue.

That, at least, wasn't too difficult: the difference was clearly visible to their magical sight.

Time was meaningless when inside a working as deeply as they were now. At the edge of her awareness, Bea noticed with relief that the four showed no impatience. Maybe it was Charlie's music that had caught them. Maybe they were able to sense more of their work than she had expected.

The last step that remained was even more intricate: Now they had to imbue every freshly cleaned fiber that had been separated with the desire to grow and reconnect to its other end, marking the path and forbidding the formation of fresh scarring. They couldn't speed that process up just by pouring magic into Jonathan. They could only make sure that his body would know what was expected of it, and stick with the plan.

A healing trance, of course, could have led to faster results, rerouting any energy his body would use for other purposes into healing, and healing only.

She understood why Jonathan had declined that, though she found his noble thoughts somewhat misplaced where his worries about Charlotte were concerned. After Alysha, she was surely the most powerful Gale woman alive – though Bea would have bitten off her own tongue before she'd let anyone hear her say as much.

The other reason was something she found more sensible: If he seemed healed practically overnight, it surely would draw a lot more attention than a gradual recovery – and pretending to be recovering slowly when he was really entirely healed already would be hard.

Finally, she went over their work once again, checking every suggested connection they had marked, every block and protection they had put in.

Nodding at Alysha, she leaned back and let go of the power.

*

Charlie let her tune run out. She had slipped into a kind of trance herself in her playing, enabling her to keep up the music for much longer than she usually would have.

Now she stretched, opening and closing her hands carefully to keep them from cramping.

The power she had channeled for the last hours had been as calm as it had been calming, and it had none of the effect that powerful workings typically caused in the Gales.

The kind of power Allie and their aunties had wielded was different. They would have to take a break to burn off the aftereffects before they could sensibly do anything else.

That wasn't an issue. They'd known they were going to do this work today, and had prepared accordingly. They'd be fine by the time they had to leave for Mount Royal.

The four were coming out of the music, too. Charlie, having seen them regularly in the last few weeks, had been less surprised than the aunties or even Allie by how much they had grown together, but it had been nice to see hard proof of her impression.

"It's done," Auntie Bea told Jace as soon as he looked at her. "But I can't tell you how long your body will take to heal just like that. You may be in for a bit of a wait."

"As long as you're sure that the wait will actually come to an end, too," Jace said. The four were disentangling themselves. Surprise was clear on their faces when they saw the time.

"If you see no improvement within the next six weeks, I suggest you let us have another look," Bea said. "We should be able to give you a progress report by then."

Or, Charlie suspected, tell him if it turned out that going through a healing trance was not optional. It wasn't like the Gales had a lot of experience with skipping that part.

"Will do," Jace said. "Need to take a brief break myself before I do anything else."

Charlie raised an eyebrow at him as he carefully maneuvered himself back into his chair after tossing his jacket to Alec, but said nothing. Instead, she turned to the other three. "You _are_ coming to Mount Royal with us, right?"

Alec nodded. "If you can fit all of us into your cars, definitely. Say – does Allie _really_ plan to put Clary's entrance painting up _there_?"

Following where he pointed, Charlie shrugged. "Sure. And why not? It'll look beautiful there. And you _are_ welcome here any time. She would have given you keys if you'd have been likely to arrive anywhere outside of this building."

"Speaking of Allie." Clary opened her bag to pull out a number of sketch pads. "I've brought her some things from Alicante – in case there's anything in there that she wants to have for the store."

Charlie opened the first and flipped through it. "Did you draw all of these?" she asked. "They look amazing – but that must have taken forever. Why didn't you just take photographs?"

Clary laughed. "Because photographs just can't live up to these." Reaching out, she plunged her hand into the page that was currently open and retrieved the little music box from it.

"Oh." Charlie watched her put the item down on the table and open the lid to let it play its tune. "I see! Allie will love this! But be careful who you show this to – people _will_ use you as a moving van as soon as they realize this is actually an option."

*

Getting into and out of the car took a little experimentation on Jace's part. Charlie simply made up for the delay by driving a little faster, so they arrived at almost the same time as the other two cars that had started out from the apartment – and just in time to see a warlock's portal open in the front yard, spitting out four people before closing up again neatly.

"Show-off," Clary muttered.

Magnus spared her a quick grin before he approached Alec, moving in for a tight hug and a long kiss, as if they had been separated for weeks, rather than just over a day.

"How sweet," Maia said, rolling her eyes in Simon's direction.

He responded with a grin as he leaned a little closer towards her, leaving Luke time to say hello to Clary first. She was as close to a daughter for him as anyone, after all.

The two hugged, then moved an arm's length apart to scrutinize each other. Daily training had changed Clary's posture and started to build up muscle on her body; Luke hadn't put a glamor on for the day. His new charms were visible, sparkling on dark skin where they weren't covered by his clothes. There were more charms on Simon and Maia, some bearing Luke's signature style, some Magnus'.

The Gales, still piling out of the cars and sorting children, gave them approving looks.

"I'm so glad you came!" Clary told Luke. "I've missed you so much!"

They had been texting back and forth, but it wasn't the same.

Luke pulled her close once again. "We've missed you, too," he told her. "But you look like Alicante has been doing you good."

"That's Izzy's training," Clary claimed. "Alicante I could do without. They're teaching me to ride horses, Luke! Horses! Can you believe it?"

He gave a low chuckle. "I can," he said. "Horses are the main mode of transport in Idris after all."

Clary's eyes narrowed. "Do you mean _you_ know how to—" She broke off, realizing that of course, Luke had to know how to ride. That actually, her mother had to have known. She tried to imagine them doing some of the things the Lightwoods had shown her. "I just can't imagine you on a horse. Or roof-running in Alicante. Or—"

"I'm not sure I could get _near_ one anymore now," Luke said. "They would probably smell the wolf on me and bolt. Not admitting to anything where the roof-running is concerned."

Izzy laughed as she heard that. "We can always ask mom. She's been very forthcoming about your exploits."

Luke didn't look quite sure about what he thought of that – or whether he believed it in the first place.

"Let's go inside," Charlie suggested from somewhere behind them. "I'm starving."

"Nourishment charm," Alec told her with a grin. He still had an arm around Magnus.

Charlie returned a disgusted look. "When we have pie inside? Hardly!"

"I can't wait for the pie!" Simon declared. "Let's get to it!"

"I still can't believe the pie didn't make you sick," Clary noted.

Simon gave her a broad grin. "Sometimes I think that maybe it has actually cured me. Some food has started to smell really delicious again. Haven't had it in me to try it out, though."

Hearing that, Charlie dug in her pockets until she found a Mars bar that she held out to him. "No time like the present," she said.

"The pie has no curative ingredients." Jack came around the house. He had landed behind it under the protection of a glamor to avoid undue attention – the people in their neighborhood may have become used to some odd things going on in that building even when the former owner had lived there, but having a fully grown dragon land beside the pool probably would have been pushing things a little. "I volunteer to take responsibility, though. I don't think there are any studies on the effects of dragon blood on vampires."

Simon frowned. "You might have a point. I still feel the burn of your blood when I focus on it. Fine. Give me that." He snatched the chocolate bar from Charlie's hand and unwrapped it. "On your risk. You may end up with a puking vampire in a few minutes, and I promise you that's not a nice sight."

"We have bathrooms," Charlie reassured him.

"Exhibit A," Jace said, striking a lecturing tone. "The chocolate-bar-eating vampire. Watch how his fangs don't come out as he bites into the sticky substance. I conclude: they aren't his sweet teeth."

"Oh, you!" Simon swatted at Jace, who ducked.

"Watch it," he cautioned. "It's not nice to make me fall out."

"Do you fall out?" Simon asked, curious.

"Rarely," Jace admitted. "But I can overbalance."

Magnus took a step towards them. "May I offer my services in getting you up those stairs?" he asked, bowing slightly in Jace's direction.

"If by services you mean magic, go ahead," the response came immediately.

Blue light sparkled around Magnus's hands, and Jace found himself floating towards the door. For a moment, he wished he had had proper armrests to clamp his hands to. This mode of transport felt awfully wobbly, and he thought there was a very real risk that he was about to give a demonstration of what falling out looked like – floating a few inches above the steps of a marble stair seemed to be the worst possible location for _that_.

Then he was back on solid ground, and he nodded at Magnus, determined not to let anyone see just how precarious that particular mode of transport was.

*

The last time they had seen the entire Gale family assembled had been the day after Ritual – the night before they had returned to New York. Then, they had mostly sat outside, in spite of the cool temperatures, enjoying dips in the heated pool, pie, and relaxing after the battle they had just fought and won.

Today, everyone ate together in the gigantic open living area on the building's ground floor. No one asked what the roast they were fed had been before its career change to become food. The Gales' cooking could be very indiscriminating between realms of origin, as evidenced by the ever-popular basilisk pie.

Once again, Simon found himself with a tall glass of fresh blood, heated to body temperature.

A moment later, he had to push aside the inquisitive hands of Allie's son Edward

"No!" he told the child. "If you spill that, they'll never get the stains out of the tablecloth."

That earned him a non-comprehending look from Edward, who was perfectly used to spills disappearing at the application of a charm, and not at all familiar with the concept of permanent stains.

"I don't think you'd like that, kid," Elessar the Seelie said from across the table. "I promise you, it's an acquired taste."

That didn't make any more of an impression than Simon's caution had, and Alec pulled the boy onto his lap to offer him more child-appropriate sustenance before he could actually give Simon's drink a try and possibly decide that he liked it after all. Nothing seemed impossible with the Gales.

"Luke, have you been here before?" Clary asked, surprised by the easy way in which he fit into the group and his utter lack of surprise at anything anyone said or did.

He nodded. "I came over with Magnus a couple of times," he admitted. "I really wanted to meet these people – especially after all they… showed you."

"I think we really upset your partner that one time," Magnus added, laughing.

Luke rolled his eyes, the most annoyed look on his face. Ollie, the woman he was paired with for police work, had not found his explanation of role playing and theme parties – "You know, like Murder Mysteries, just with paranormal things" – good enough. She continued to try to prove that he was, in fact, a werewolf, which involved hanging around where she thought he might change.

"Is she _still_ after you?" Clary asked.

"Yeah. And that time she was staking out the Jade Wolf again and Magnus and I left by portal and returned – to his loft. So I came back home and I wish I could say I almost scared her to death when I came up behind her after she'd made sure I hadn't left the building for hours."

"You should eat her," Jack recommended.

Luke laughed. "Unfortunately, she does fall into the category of things you can have a conversation with. I wish I had to have fewer of them, actually."

"You should put muggle-repellent charms all over the place," Melissa added some advice of her own. "Maybe _that_ would help."

"It'd keep her off the docks maybe," Luke said. "But it would also keep everyone else out. That includes garbage removal people, delivery people…It'd cause more trouble than she's worth."

"You can always relocate to Calgary," Allie said, causing Charlie to laugh.

"Oh Allie-Cat," the Bard said. "Forever trying to keep everyone together. That's never going to work!"

David, seated close to the door and between the aunties, just in case the large gathering accidentally triggered a change and he started to turn into something that had no business being inside a building, joined in her amusement. "If Luke decides he does want to relocate some day, I'm sure I could get him a job with the local police," he offered.

"Thanks," Luke returned. "But I have a pack to take care of in New York. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. And I really do like New York."

"Ah well." Allie managed to sound only a little disappointed. "If you reconsider at any point, let us know."

Luke frowned a little at her. "Did you really think I'd say yes?"

She shrugged. "Someone's going to. One of the tenants in those extra houses we bought along the park gave us notice that she's relocating, so the house is going to be free soon."

That was a kind of logic that only worked when dealing with the Gales: The house was going to be vacant, so obviously they were going to need it for someone else around the same time.

Seeing no need to pursue the subject any farther, Allie pushed back her chair. "Now, why don't we all relocate and go downstairs for pie and presents?"

*

Edward and Evan were clinging to Alec and Magnus, currently apparently their favorite uncles among the lot. Edward protested vocally against Alec's attempt to put him down so he could help Jace down the stairs into the salon-turned-library they used for the more casual part of the gathering.

"I can carry you," Simon offered, grinning at Jace. "I'll barely notice it – vampiric strength and all."

Jace really wasn't sure he liked that proposal. He didn't particularly like being carried by Alec, but he was his _parabatai_ and brother, and he had accepted it as the most convenient solution to flights of stairs that had more than three or four steps. He hadn't allowed anyone else to pick him up since he'd seized control of his own life again.

But the boy was putting up a fuss, and _he_ wasn't four years old. He fixed Simon with a stern look. "How's the chocolate and the meal behaving?"

"Wonderfully," Simon declared, licking his lips as he thought of the flavor. It had been amazing, tasting everything with his vampiric senses without immediately feeling sick to the stomach.

"If you either puke on me or drop me on the way," Jace warned, "I promise you, you'll regret it."

"I swear I won't!" Simon moved in. "What should I do?"

"Just pick me up like you would if I was asleep or something, and make sure you don't trip," Jace suggested. He put his arm around Simon's neck as the vampire bent to obey, helping to balance himself out.

Simon moved easily towards the stairs, apparently not feeling the extra weight at all. "Can someone bring that chair?"

"Don't bother," Jace told him. "Just put me down on a sofa downstairs. Unless they've replaced that plush carpet, it'd stick to the flooring like anything."

Simon moved away as soon as he had deposited Jace, leaving him to arrange himself on the sofa as he liked. He did acknowledge the grateful nod Jace gave him with the smallest inclination of his own head.

A moment later, Clary dropped next to him, handing him a plate of pie.

"And there I was just thinking I was so full I'd never be able to eat again," Jace said as he took the first fork full, relishing the fresh taste that didn't fit the season at all.

They started to unpack then, handing out the toys they had brought to the children.

"I've been practicing a lot!" Richard, the boy Jace had started to give piano lessons to during those weeks they had spent in Calgary, announced. "I learned a piece for you! Would you like to hear it?"

"I'd love to," Jace said, his smile genuine. He suspected that he was going to be playing as well before the night was over.

Knowing that it would be difficult to smuggle anyone into Alicante without being noticed on New Year's Eve, when people might randomly visit or send around invitations, they had brought their Downworlder friends' presents along as well.

Magnus gave a sound of delight as he unwrapped Alec's present and examined the containers of charmed make-up.

"One could think you believe I need some extra protection," he told Alec, holding up a small bottle of nail polish to inspect it. "And you're probably right about it, too. Oh, these are just wonderful! I'll be more protected than I've ever been if I wear any of these! I love them! I love you!" With that declaration, he turned to put his arms around Alec, the bottle still safely in his hand, and pull him close.

Alec returned the embrace, deepening the contact.

"When I saw Graham today," he whispered, low enough that hopefully only Magnus could hear him. "All I could think of was that I want to put that charm on you."

"Then why don't you?" Magnus answered, his voice no louder. "But then I want to do the same."

"I will have to glamor it over." Alec looked and sounded sad at that. "I'll hate that but – I'd love to know it's there."

Magnus moved back, giving Alec enough space to touch his face. He put the fingers of his free hand against his forehead, where the charm Allie had marked Graham with was placed. "Do you want to go first?"

Alec glanced at Graham across the room only briefly to catch a glimpse of that charm to refresh his memory. It wasn't really necessary. He'd been thinking about that charm on and off for weeks.

He drew it on Magnus' skin in bold, deft lines, watching the power seep into him and settle.

He barely had time to wonder what it felt like when Magnus raised his hand to Alec's face, repeating the motions.

Like all charms, it didn't really feel like anything as it was applied, but it left him with a warm feeling, as if Magnus' hand was still lingering even after he had taken it away again.

They watched the others unpack their presents. Luke had brought a set of colored markers for Clary that would draw on very nearly any surface.

"So you'll always be able to quickly draw yourself a way out of a situation," he said as explanation.

Clary had small portraits of each other for Simon and Maia, set in lockets ready to be worn.

Luke grinned at the werewolf book, but then turned serious when he studied it in more detail. "I'm not going to ask you where you got this," he declared. "I know for a fact that the old editions of this one are on the blacklist in Idris."

"Don't ask and we won't have to lie to you," Jace recommended, just as Magnus started to hand out small parcels to each of them.

These contained bracelets of leather embossed to match each recipient's style. Each of the broad leather rings concealed a thin chain, clearly intended to be fitted with small pendants that would be protected and kept out of sight by the outer layer that split in the middle and could be folded back to reveal what was kept beneath. One was already attached to each: a small red crystal, looking somewhat familiar to them.

"I fixed the crystal," Magnus explained. "But it came apart where it was cracked, so I used the fragments. They'll still alert you to demon activity, and you can add more later."

It went without saying that that meant 'I'll make more for you later'.

They had just put them on when Allie came over, carrying five small, wrapped bundles.

"These are from the family," she told them as she handed one to each.

The wrappings came off, revealing a set of long, hooded cloaks of a material that looked too smooth to have been woven on any kind of loom.

"Seelie cloaks!" Magnus exclaimed as he unfolded his.

"Faerie cloaks," Elessar corrected from where he sat, comfortably snuggling with Melissa. "And it took a half-dragon, me and my sister to procure them, so take good care of them. When you wear them, they will make you blend in with your surroundings and conceal you from all but the most attentive eyes."

Clary spread hers out, twirling it around and throwing it over her shoulders before looking at Jace. "How do I look in it?"

He made a vague gesture. "You're kind of hard to see even when you're standing still," he declared. "Move, and you'll be very nearly invisible. This is amazing!"

Izzy had put her cloak on as well, trying out the effect. "Between this and the bracelets, you'd think people expect us to get into a lot of dangerous situations in the near future," she stated drily. "They are wonderful!"

She dug in her bag then, finding the presents they had brought for the adult Gales. These were mostly books from Idris - potions recipes and alchemy for the Aunties, cook books for Allie, Katie and Melissa, and a songbook for Charlie.

They had a detailed marzipan dragon they had seen at a confectioner's shop in Alicante for Jack, presented seated on a volume titled _Dragon Demons and What the Mundanes Made of Them._ As they had hoped, Jack laughed at the sight of it.

For Graham, they had found a yearbook of the Alicante Herald. "As inspiration, in case you run out of things to report on in your tabloid."

By the time everyone was done opening presents, there were small heaps of boxes distributed generously through the room, many of them with plates of partially eaten pie on top, marking them for the owner.

"Luke, I need to show you something," Clary said as she dropped back onto the sofa, her cloak neatly folded and placed in her bag.

Taking out her sketchpad, she flipped back the cover and turned the pages until she reached one where she had drawn the werewolf-like creature from the exhibition room. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

He studied the drawing. "Where did you see this?"

"The basement of the lab in Alicante," Clary told him. "It's labeled as an early werewolf, but it doesn't look like one."

Luke's eyes narrowed. "Whatever that is, I'm sure that is not a werewolf. Does it actually say 1232?" He tapped the sign Clary had penciled in.

She nodded. "We were wondering if maybe that was a mistake. Or maybe that was a _very_ early werewolf, before they became the way they are now?"

"If that is the case, I've never heard of it," Luke told her. "I can ask around – there must be some who have dug more deeply into our history than I have – but this is the first time I see anything like this."

"How did werewolves happen in the first place?" Izzy asked, leaning in to join their conversation. "I mean, I know all the unknown demonic influence stuff we are taught, but do actual werewolves have any more input on that?"

Luke shrugged. "Not much, I fear. There supposedly was a first pack in the Black Forest in Germany. But it was a long time ago, and those early werewolves weren't very good chroniclers, I fear. They were too busy just surviving."

"Another thing," Izzy said, trying to not sound disappointed. "We've come across the term 'Diana's children' in some of Valentine's notes that we took from the Fairchild townhouse. Does that ring a bell of any kind?"

Now Luke's face took on a concentrated frown as he thought back, trying to remember anything that might be connected to the designation. He had been Valentine's _parabatai_. Had the man ever mentioned a group that went by that name?

He shook his head after a while. "Doesn't ring any bells at all. I will let you know if I remember anything but –I don't even know at which point he really stopped confiding in me." He hesitated. "He had a secret safe in his study in the town house. I never knew what he put in there. Maybe you can‑" Noticing their expressions, he broke off. "You found it already."

"Mom showed us where it was," Izzy confirmed. "He used it to keep correspondence."

Luke frowned. "Correspondence? With whom?"

She exchanged a look with her brother, who shrugged. "Go ahead. Mom has my phone, remember?"

Pulling out hers, Izzy flipped through the photographs until she came to her set of copies of those letters they had liberated from the Fairchild house. "If you're sure you want to know…"

He nodded, holding out a hand for the device.

They watched his expression change as he read.

"I don't even want to believe this," he said eventually. "You understand that if this is what it looks like, the situation with the Clave, whatever situation there is, is worse than it seemed five minutes ago."

"Luke," Clary said, "I can promise you that whatever you assume the situation is, it _is_ worse. There's a lot that doesn't make sense yet, but whatever sense it is moving towards making, it's going to be bad."

"You need to be careful," Luke cautioned. "You're making powerful enemies if you keep digging in such things." He looked and sounded torn, uncertain if he wanted to make them promise they would stay out of it, or urge them on to investigate faster.

"They have powerful friends, too." Jack had approached their group and dropped into the seat Jace had vacated when Evan and Edward had become very insistent on showing him their newest toys.

Not wanting to wait for Luke to actually tell her to stay out of anything and having to refuse, Clary joined Jace and the children on the floor.

"You're doing well with the kids," she noted after watching them play for a while.

Jace looked at her, smiling. "Kind of makes me want one of our own," he said. His tone was joking, but Clary couldn't help but remember that her parents had married at roughly their age, and had had Jonathan a year later. Shadowhunters married early and had children early…

"After we've taken care of… you know… whatever. Things that might kill us on very short notice," she returned. "I do want to know what exactly is going on with us Nephilim before we make any more…"


	30. Chapter 30

_December 23 rd, 2017_

When their gathering finally broke up a few hours after midnight, Magnus made a portal for the other New Yorkers to return home, but stayed behind himself with Alec, Izzy, Clary and Jace. The five of them returned to the apartment above the store together with Allie and the others. It had been Charlie's idea that they should catch a few hours of sleep in Calgary, which would allow her to rest a little before taking them home. She had returned those of the family who had visited this branch for the festivities – including her own mother, who had decided that it was time she spent a holiday with the three of her children who had left the Eastern foothold of the Gale family behind, as well as Allie and David's parents – to Darsden East, dropped off several of the girls from Cameron's list at their university towns, and then declared herself ready for a nap.

They suspected that the assembled Gales really just wanted to know them safe for at least this one night, and they didn't object. Maryse had texted every half hour until she had gone to bed and had resumed the texting when she got up in the morning. The seven-thirty AM message – arriving at half an hour to midnight Calgary time – had been the last one they had received.

So that was the time they had to return to in order to avoid trouble, and they were perfectly fine with letting Charlie sleep before she took them back in time – especially since there had been another text coming in about two hours later, informing them that: _It's more amusing than bad really._ It was signed _Alec._

"That's very considerate of the future you," Jace had told Alec with a laugh.

"I'm a very considerate future person," Alec had claimed. "But to make sure, remind me that I need to send that message when we're back."

They had breakfast together, before Charlie bundled them all into the Wood and counted down the hours, bringing them back out on the abandoned roof terrace in the middle of the night.

A moment later, they were off again and on the way to Alicante, headed for the back garden of the Lightwood residence.

*

Maryse was in the kitchen, making coffee and getting breakfast ready for herself and Max. She looked up when they came in.

"Oh," she greeted them. "I take it something will come up in the next thirty minutes." She took down a few more plates and cups. "You'll have breakfast with us, right?"

They looked at each other. "Strictly speaking, we just ate," Alec admitted.

"We figured that if we were going to go back in time, we might just as well get some sleep and some food before we leave," Izzy added. "But I could probably have some more coffee anyway?"

"Coffee sounds good," Jace said. "I'll go take a shower first, though. The Gales' bathroom is… unadjusted."

Maryse nodded. "Did they do their thing?" she asked before Jace could turn and follow up on his words.

"They did," he confirmed. "Or they say they did. I don't feel any different than before. They said to give it time, and to come back to let them check if nothing happens in too long."

"How long is too long?"

"They said to come back if there's no improvement within six weeks," Alec answered, giving Jace the opportunity to leave. "If it happens, we should consider the healing trance after all, I guess – but so far, we'll just wait out those first ten days and not expect any changes before at least that time is over." He put a pan on the stove and started breaking eggs into it. "If we are going to have visitors, they may as well find us all enjoying our breakfast together," he declared. "How did it go with Max?"

"Same as usual," his mother said. "He was mad you didn't ask him to come along on your night hike. I suggested I'd take him on one of our own, but he declined."

"You mean refused," Izzy corrected.

"That. I offered to ask you that _you_ take him on another one today, but he declined that, too."

"Refused."

Alec scraped the scrambled eggs into a bowl. "I wish we had Hodge around to train him. I bet he'd have him back in shape in no time."

"You'd trust Hodge with that?" Maryse sounded surprised.

"You trusted him with training us when you knew he had every reason to try to get back at you." Alec's voice was even, but he could see immediately that his words hit a mark.

"He didn't blame you and Izzy and Jace for what Robert and I did," his mother told them. "I think he loved you like his own children. You were the closest thing to it he was ever likely to have…"

"Yes." Alec closed his eyes for a moment to sort his thoughts. "We read the court file. I'm impressed by his self-control. I'm not sure I could have done that."

"I don't think I could have." Izzy gathered everything that still needed to go on the table. Clary had been standing by, listening but not joining in the conversation. She took the tray from her friend to carry it into the dining room.

"I do wish I could make it up to him." The words could have sounded hypocritical, but somehow the older Lightwood gave them a genuine feel.

Her children nodded. "We all do. But I fear death is something not even the Gales can reverse."

*

They had just settled down to eat when the doorbell rang. It sounded quite urgent.

Exchanging a knowing look with all of them, Maryse got up to open the front door.

There was some muttering, followed by a louder announcement of: "We must verify the whereabouts of Alexander Gideon Lightwood and Isabelle Sophie Lightwood."

"At the breakfast table," Maryse said, her voice loud and clear. "I don't know why you need them at this time in the morning, but come on in." Her tone clearly added: The sooner you're in, the sooner you'll be gone again.

A second later, she appeared in the doorframe, flanked by a man and a woman in work gear. They thought they had seen both in passing – possibly at the Clave Assembly.

The expressions on their faces when they saw all four of them sitting around the table, Jace's hair still wet from his shower, were memorable.

"Alec, Izzy," Maryse said. "These two need you for something."

The siblings pushed back their chairs, starting to get to their feet. The visitors waved them back down.

"There was some concern about you," the woman declared. "You went off the tracking grid entirely last night at seven o'clock. After an absence of twelve hours, the alarm went off that you were lost."

"Oh." Alec rubbed his anti-tracking rune. "I'm sorry. We went on a training hike with Clary and had our deflection runes on. We did a bit of winter survival in the wild and only just came back what – thirty minutes ago?" His voice betrayed that he wasn't even close to the truth to anyone who knew him at all. Luckily, these two didn't know him. The look he sent to Izzy, Clary and Jace in turn was meant to beg one of them to take over, but would hopefully be interpreted as asking for their confirmation only.

"We went on anti-tracking to make sure we could actually do our work," Izzy added. She was by far the smoother liar. "You know, pranks among friends are fun, in particular when played at night in the forest, but they're not very conducive to a good learning experience."

They frowned

"Did you go to Brocelind Forest?" the man asked.

"No, Sir." Jace declared quickly. "Just the groves nearby. Brocelind Forest is too far for me to reach without a horse at this point." He gestured vaguely, reminding them that he couldn't walk or run.

The woman turned her eyes towards Izzy, piercing her with a glare. "Did you meet any vampires there?"

"Certainly not!" Izzy shot back. "I've never heard of them coming that close to the city without good reason. We were teaching Clary how to build shelters, set up camp, that kind of thing. We didn't need complications from unbidden visitors, and we didn't want to go so far away that we might get into trouble with the wildlife. It would have been quite disruptive if we'd had to suddenly take care of a mad bear or wolf."

"You're still off the tracking gird," the other officer declared. "Why?"

Jace rolled his eyes. "Because we only came back barely in time to catch a shower before breakfast. The last activation hasn't worn off yet." 'Obviously, you imbecile', his tone said. Jace Herondale probably was the only one of their group who could conceivably get away with that much implied insubordination.

Their visitors turned back towards Alec and Izzy. "You scared your father to death by just disappearing like that." It was supposed to sound stern and reprimanding, but somehow didn't have the desired effect, as the two merely looked surprised.

"But he knew we were supposed to be training Clary," Izzy said after a moment.

"Or that you were and I was helping out at least," Alec corrected. "And – why didn't he just send a fire message to ask if everything was alright?"

"If you had been taken by someone, sending you a fire message might have put you in danger," the woman said – both their visitors still hadn't even given their names.

Though clearly not addressed, Jace butted in again. "I think we've all shown we're not easy to overpower. If Robert had any concerns in that area, he might want to actually read the report from Heidelberg to get an idea of our current skills."

"What I would like to know," Maryse said, her voice calm and entirely reasonable, "is why Robert didn't drop by himself if he was that worried."

The two looked at each other. They seemed to be getting a little uncomfortable, faced by the solid wall of refusal to react to their announcement in any way that would have given them a good opening to proceed.

"I believe that he did so out of consideration for you, Mrs. Lightwood," the man finally said. "It is not hard to imagine that his presence would cause you discomfort."

Maryse raised an eyebrow. "I can assure you that any discomfort Robert has caused me is long in the past. Why, I even told him he could come round for coffee if he had anything he needed to discuss about how to continue from here. So forgive me if you see me surprised."

They shrugged. "We had our orders."

Alec forced a smile. "You've obeyed them. You have ascertained that we are all here and safe. I'm sure we'll show up on the grid again within the hour. You can tell our father that if he wants us to change anything about the training we provide for our friend, he needs to talk to Inquisitor Herondale about that. We're working on her orders."

It was a risk, but not a particularly large one. Inquisitor Herondale would not have forgotten Robert's recent blackmail and would likely not be too cooperative.

The two officers' lack of enthusiasm at the thought of having to tell Robert _that_ was impossible to miss.

Maryse didn't give them the time to come up with anything else. "I think that is a very good idea," she said. "Also, give my regards to Robert and tell him that he is, of course, welcome to drop by any time he needs anything from us. No one here will make a scene."

*

_December 24 th, 2016_

Izzy was rather proud of her student's progress. Clary was picking up every skill they introduced her to nicely for someone who hadn't started training as barely more than a toddler. Once she had overcome her insecurity around horses, the riding lessons had gone more and more smoothly as well. Today was the first time she had ridden Aurora over low bars – not quite high enough to require the horse to jump, but certainly enough to be felt by the rider.

Switching to the larger horse had clearly been a good idea. Not only was she easier to sit than Brownie at higher speeds, it also did Clary good to see she was able to control a mount that wasn't declared a beginner's pony.

Brownie continued to be exercised every day, of course. Maryse insisted that Max took care of that, and she was as relentless an instructor for that as she was during their own sparring exercises.

They had wrapped up the lesson for today and then, seeing that Alec and Jace were far from done with their own riding yet, had retreated into the hay loft, where they were reasonably sure they would be safe from Max's complaints when he and their mother arrived – which would be any moment now.

They were sitting by a window opening, comfortably resting in the fragrant bales spread out on a wooden structure heavily marked with fireproof runes. From their vantage point, they had a view of the paddocks and outdoor rings – or would have had if they had spent any time looking outside.

Instead, they were both immersed in the books they had brought, interrupting their reading only when Clary had any need of clarifications or required some new vocabulary.

"Clary? Iz?" Jace eventually called from below.

Izzy crawled over to the hatch to look down. "Here! Just a second – we're coming down."

Jace put a hand on a rung of the ladder and gave it a probing tug. "Is this thing firmly attached at the top?"

"Yeah," Izzy confirmed after a quick check.

"Then don't bother," Jace told her. "I'm coming up."

He quickly put his feet off the footrest and onto the floor, where there was less of a risk of slipping suddenly, before reaching for the highest rung he could safely grasp and pulling himself up out of the chair.

Working his way up hand over hand was easier than he had expected, and it gave him the opportunity to determine two things: Getting his feet tangled in the rungs below was annoying. Having them actually land on top of the rungs did help to stabilize his position, even though they didn't strictly speaking bear any weight.

The top end turned out tricky, when he had to push himself up far enough on the top-most rung to get his upper body into the hay loft to the point where he could let go and pull the rest of himself in without slipping back down.

"Alec is going to be busy a while longer," he explained. "We just ran into Maryse and Max on the way in, and Max has decided that his complaint of the day is that he has to ride a pony while everyone else has horses – so Alec's letting him try out Thunder."

"And he needs to stay there and supervise that?" Izzy asked, one eyebrow raised.

"I don't know about _needs to_ ," Jace returned. "But he threatened he'd never lend Thunder to Max again if he didn't treat the horse right, so he kind of has to watch. Also, _someone_ needs to get Brownie some exercise, so Alec's going to put her through her paces on a lunge line while Max plays with Thunder."

"A what?" Clary asked.

"A long rein that you use to let the horse run circles around you," Izzy told her. "Because there's no way Alec could sit on Brownie with those long legs of his and not look utterly ridiculous."

Clary chuckled at the mental image. "I might just have to try and draw that," she said.

The other two laughed.

"I'm sure he'll prefer it if you draw him on Thunder," Jace pointed out as he made his way across the straw-covered floor until he reached Clary. There, he arranged himself comfortably, inviting her to lean into him so he could look over her shoulder and share her book.

They continued to read in silence, though Jace's attention drifted towards the window every once in a while to check how both Max and Alec were progressing. The boy was doing well enough with the larger horse – though admittedly Thunder had already had plenty of opportunity to work off any excess energy he had come out of his stall with that afternoon.

Letting his gaze wander a little, Jace watched the path that led up to the stables, where riders were coming and going every once in a while. Eventually, he drew a FarSight charm on his eyelids to keep himself amused scanning the distance

He was almost dozing off, with the warmth and comfort of Clary's body against him, when he spotted something that jerked him wide awake immediately – and caused him to shift so suddenly that he jostled Clary into losing her grip on the book.

"Jace?" she asked, turning to check on him. His face looked pale and shaken. "Something wrong?"

"Yes."

Izzy moved closer to the window to check what had startled him so, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. "What is it?"

"I just saw Valentine." The shock was still clear in his voice. "Look – I know it's impossible, but it was just – I saw the way this guy was moving and I saw my father there. You know – 'Michael Wayland'. Valentine. I swear it was—so perfect, so familiar… It's crazy, I know."

"Jace, calm down," Izzy's words were just this side of an order. "I believe you. What did he look like?"

Jace stared out of the window, trying to find the person again. He hated that his first reaction to seeing that man had been a jolt of incredulous joy at seeing his father, just like the time he and Clary had discovered the glamored Valentine hiding in that locker.

Even knowing who the man who had raised him was, he was still conditioned on some level to love that person. That was probably not surprising, considering he'd been raised by him for the first part of his childhood, but he wished he could have just dropped any emotional connection he had to him.

Clary had no such issues, obviously, in spite of being related to him by blood. She'd never met Valentine until she'd turned eighteen, and then she'd already known all about what he had done.

"I only saw him from behind," Jace admitted. "But it was just so… so very familiar. Like looking out of my bedroom window and seeing him ride away from the manor. I saw that and I was six or seven years old again and left behind because he had something important to do that I wasn't old enough for yet."

"Going to check on Jonathan Christopher?" Clary suggested.

Nodding, Jace continued to scan the streets. "Most likely, yes. Anyway… the man I just saw didn’t _look_ like Valentine. Or Michael Wayland. His hair was lighter." He ran a hand through his own golden hair.

"Blond?" Izzy was typing on her phone.

"Yeah. What are you doing?"

"Telling Alec to get his behind up here, stat." She put the phone away again and returned her attention to Jace. "You didn't bring the tracking hair by any chance?"

"No. We kind of gave up on that after that trip. Alec won't be able to read your message down there."

"But he'll know one of us needs him if his phone vibrates," Izzy pointed out.

Sure enough, they could see Alec start at something down in the paddock. Not long after that, he led Brownie back inside.

Jace continued to watch the streets as far as the FarSight would reach while they waited for him.

Eventually, Alec's head appeared in the opening above the ladder. "What's wrong?" he asked as soon as his sister glanced his way.

"Jace spotted Valentine," Izzy said, giving a matter-of-fact statement.

"Strictly speaking, I guess I didn't," Jace admitted. He filled Alec in on what he _had_ seen, watching his _parabatai_ 's face for denial or scorn.

Neither appeared. Alec merely folded his long frame in the straw by the window and looked outside with the rest of them, thinking. "We know that Valentine likes his glamors, so just the fact that he didn't look like Valentine doesn't keep him from being Valentine," he said slowly.

"But being dead keeps him from being Valentine," Jace corrected him. "Clary definitely killed him. He was definitely dead and his body was definitely destroyed."

"Some body was destroyed," Clary said. "Someone could have called Raziel back and asked for the same I did for you."

They exchanged a look. "Nightshade died the same night Valentine did. There's a body that could have been glamored up and used," Clary suggested.

Izzy blinked at her, then frowned as a thought caught hold in her brain. Her face drained of color as it spun itself farther, racing along the tracks set by hours of puzzling over the pieces they had that never fit together entirely, never made sense completely. The moment in which they all connected was almost physically painful for her.

"Iz?" Alec asked, concern thick in his voice.

She shook her head. "No. That's not what happened. At least I don't think that's what happened."

Pushing the straw apart, she sketched a protection charm on the floor between them to keep what was spoken safe from eavesdroppers.

"Valentine used himself as a test subject, right? He injected himself with Downworlder blood as well."

Clary nodded. "That's what my mother and Luke said. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just bear with me for a moment," Izzy told her. "I'm getting to it. So by his own ideology, his body was contaminated. Tainted. With demon blood."

Alec and Jace stared at her, horror reflected in both their eyes as they started to understand where she was going.

"So, that day. You kill Valentine." She pointed at Clary. "His soul leaves his body. But he doesn’t want to _die_ , and he knows from Azazel that he's able to grab another body. Except there's not a good body around to swap. _You_ are talking to Raziel, and surely if he tries to take yours it'll be noticed. The angel isn't an option and Jace has a hole in his chest and is bleeding out and as far as Valentine is concerned he's dead already. You said the core of the Silent City is below Lake Lyn, Jace."

Jace gave her a mute nod.

"So let's assume that's where the deep cells are. The highest-security ones."

"Because where better to put those than at the center of their sphere of control," Alec added.

"And there are bodies in there that are almost vacant already. Minds too insane to defend them. Pushing one out might be easy. And there's this body with an extra dose of angel blood – if by freak genetics or because Valentine already _put it there_ doesn't matter - it's there and we know it's there, and _he_ knows it's there."

"So he takes that body for himself, and who cares what happens to whatever is left of Nightshade?" Her brother sounded as if he very much didn't want to believe his own thoughts.

"He does that," Izzy confirmed. "And because he's always been working with the government even when he seemed to just lead a circle of rioters, he somehow makes his presence known and he's released and cleaned up and anything that is connected to that body's former identity is purged from the database."

"That's why he keeps calling me Clarissa." Clary was still processing that line of thought.

"You realize," Jace said slowly, "that this theory is based on very fragile ground. All we have is that I saw someone with blond hair from behind who I think moves like Valentine did."

"No." Izzy's voice was hard. "That theory is based on fitting together all the little pieces we've collected all this time. You just gave us the glue we needed for them to stick. It sounds crazy, but I think that is what _did_ happen."

Alec took an audible breath. "It also fits with someone taking up residence in the Wayland Manor when it's not supposed to be find-able. Valentine clearly knew where it was. He's lived there before."

"Do you know what that means?" Jace asked. He had turned once again to look outside.

"Yeah." Alec followed his example. "We're in even more trouble than we thought. And if Valentine works with the Clave rather than against it—"

"—which fits in perfectly with the Consul having been a Circle member," Izzy threw in.

"That," her brother agreed. "It also means he still has access to the Mortal Instruments. I'm surprised he hasn't gone and called Raziel again…"

"I'm not sure he was supposed to do that in the first place," Izzy said thoughtfully. "At least not the way he did. I can't entirely put my finger on it yet, but somehow the whole principle of _having_ the Nephilim doesn't seem to fit in if the angel has the ability to just remove anything with demon blood from our world. There must be some kind of snag to that plan. So… I don't know, maybe that was his own flourish he added to their plans and they've taken away his toys?"

"There are also probably far more people keeping an eye on the Cup and the Sword now than there are in on the full scale of things," Jace added. "So removing them would cause uproar. They are guarded so well now – they'll have to wait at least until everyone has started to forget about the details of what happened before anyone could try something in that area again."

*

 _December 25 th, 2016_.

With his mind drawn once again to how he was still thinking of Valentine as Michael Wayland when he thought of his father, and how constantly he had to remind himself of just who the man he had lived with for the first ten years of his life, the man he had mourned when he had thought him killed, had been, Jace had wondered if he should have put more of an effort into learning about his biological parents.

Certainly, Stephen Herondale had died before he was born, and so, strictly speaking, had his mother. Going by Valentine's notes, he had cut her baby – him – from her dead body.

They still were the people who had made him. Maybe he should make some effort to connect to them, to get an idea of who they were…

For a moment, he had considered contacting his mother's family. That had lasted barely long enough to look up which family members were still alive and where they were currently living.

Maryse had sat him down and told him how Céline had joined their circle. How she'd been thinking about becoming an Iron Sister to escape the abuse and neglect she was suffering in her family – and how that had made her so very hungry for every bit of approval and affection that Valentine had found it easy to rope her into his group of conspirators.

She didn't know much, but what she told him was enough to convince him that that was not the family he wanted to belong to. He didn't even want to talk to those people, knowing that either way, what they were going to tell him would be unreliable at best and straight-out lies to restore the Herondale ties at worst.

He'd looked for what traces she'd left that he could access, but found little.

Céline had never been in the field. She'd never been posted anywhere outside of Idris, and from the time she had married his father at the age of eighteen she had lived with the Herondales and not gone out much except to Valentine's gatherings. It seemed she'd had no activities outside of the Circle, and no friends that weren't part of their group.

Imogen had told him she'd been kind and gentle, but it seemed she hadn't left much more of an impression than that.

Stephen Herondale had left a lot more of a mark. Reports on his assignments abounded. Of course – he'd been a Herondale. Imogen had a lot to say about him, though it always boiled down to the same things: He'd been bold, defiant, insistent on living his own life. He'd had a closer relationship with his grandmother than his mother, which still brought a hard look into Imogen's eyes when she mentioned it.

Having been at the receiving end of Imogen's affection, Jace could imagine why. Reading the reports, he wasn't sure he would have liked his biological father a great deal.

But he also didn't like Valentine a great deal, and yet on some level he loved the man who had raised him…

How differently would he be feeling, he wondered, if it had been Stephen and Céline who had raised him?

No matter how he turned that, he couldn't find any good answer.

He didn't think the Jace Herondale raised by the people whose genes he carried would have been the same person he was. Well, for one thing, he wouldn't be Jace. He wouldn't have been called Jonathan Christopher. That name was Valentine's legacy to him.

What might his parents have called him? Marcus, possibly, after this grandfather.

He shook his head at himself. No, that was too weird to imagine.

"I almost wish we'd bury our dead the way the mundanes do," Jace sighed. "I don't know… I think maybe visiting their graves would be some kind of … closure."

Closure for what, he wasn't sure. He couldn't have said what the opening was.

Maryse looked away for a moment before meeting his eyes again. "Céline's ashes weren't sent to be kept in the Silent City," she said, her voice low.

Jace's eyes narrowed. "What? Why not?"

"Because Valentine put out word that she killed herself. You know suicides are deemed unworthy."

New anger burned in him – anger at Valentine for adding that to whatever other injustice Céline had suffered before. It wasn't so much anger for his _mother_. It was simply anger at the treatment of that poor girl.

"Do you know where?" He could hear the detached tone of his voice. Nothing he felt at the thought was in any way different from what he would have felt about hearing that some stranger had been unjustly treated in that manner. Shouldn't he have been feeling more? She was his mother…

But that was only a technicality. He had even less of a connection to her than he had to Stephen.

Maryse was nodding, though, and he mirrored her motion. "Can you show me?"

*

Alec, Izzy and Clary joined them on the ride. They hadn't pressed or barged in – they had simply asked if he'd wanted them to come along.

He had found himself gladly accepting their offer.

They had left Max with the Penhallow family, much to his displeasure but to Jia's determined declaration that she would greatly enjoy giving him a bit of a deeper insight into the exciting parts of Shadowhunter administration. Maybe he could find a career for himself there.

The wink she'd given Maryse as she'd said the words had made clear that she assumed that once she was done with him, he would gladly throw himself into his training more enthusiastically again.

So the adults of the family rode out together, with Maryse borrowing a Penhallow horse.

She took them down the path that led into Brocelind forest, answering any questions Jace thought up to the best of her knowledge.

Looking at her sideways as they rode, Jace wondered if telling him all that she could remember about his real parents cost her. She had taken him in like a son, treated him no different from Alec or Izzy, raised him like her own children – more than Robert ever had – and now here he was, asking her to give him all the information she had about the people who should have filled that role.

Did she wonder if he wished he had grown up elsewhere?

If anything, he thought as he examined his mind for that question, he wished he had never lived anywhere but with the Lightwoods, that no one had ever had any reason to question that he belonged with that family.

He should have told her that, probably, but it seemed the wrong moment for that.

Maryse pulled up her horse when they reached a crossroads. The Forest was already in sight, just a few more minutes' ride from where they were.

"There." She pointed to the grass between two of the branches of the road. "I guess her family didn't think it necessary to put up a marker even. But that is where it was. Valentine made us come and watch. He used her death – like he used everything – to drive home how the way we were forced to live by the Accords was ruining everyone."

Jace studied the ground. There was no trace left of the grave once dug there. Of course not – it had been nearly twenty years ago.

"Maryse?" he asked, without looking away.

"Yes, Jace?" She moved her horse closer to Crusader's side, her mere presence a calming blanket.

As a child, he'd always prided himself in being beyond the kinds of fears that Alec and Izzy sometimes expressed and needed their mother's support for.

As an adult, he wondered how much of that had been nothing but Valentine's upbringing that didn't leave space for any kind of perceived weakness.

That didn't leave space for _love_.

To love is to destroy. To be loved is to be destroyed.

Had he really, seriously believed in that as little as four months ago? How had he managed to miss that the Lightwoods' love for each other made them stronger – not weaker?

"Do you remember when she died? The day?"

"It was around Mid-January," Maryse said. "It was so cold that year. They had to thaw the ground to dig the grave – it was frozen solid all the way down. It snowed a lot, too. It snowed that day she was buried."

"Mid-January," Jace repeated.

"I am sure I can find out the precise day," Maryse offered. "Do you want to put up a marker?"

"I probably should." Someone should, and surely no one else _would_. "But I was thinking that's the only way I can find out my actual birthday."

She nodded. "I'll get you the date.

He felt Crusader shift and forced his hands to relax on the reins. Another question came to his mind, unbidden, unrelated.

Or maybe not that unrelated. The man had been like … what? Not like a father – not quite like a friend, not with the age difference between them what it was. An uncle? A cousin? A much older brother?

"Where did they bury Hodge?" The words were out before he could stop them.

"Some other crossroads, probably," Alec said.

Jace saw the shadow of grief in his _parabatai'_ s eyes and knew it was reflected in his own. It was easier to grieve for that man than it was to feel anything remotely like it for his own parents. That sounded so wrong.

"We should find out," Izzy said. "He deserves a marker, too."

*

They returned home, Jace still deeply in his thoughts, alternating between wondering how he actually felt about his parents and how he _should_ have been feeling.

His thoughts were interrupted by a fire message, officially looking and sealed.

This time, it wasn't for the four of them, however.

Maryse caught it, smoothing it out to read. Her expression turned from surprised to incredulous to merely serious.

"What is it?" Now Jace found that concern and worry came entirely naturally to him.

"Robert has reconsidered," Maryse said, her voice flat. "He desires to marry Margaret Dearborn at the earliest possible convenience – which means he must be rid of his current wife first. He wants a divorce as soon as an Iron Sister can come in to cut the runes."

Alec's shocked expression fit everyone's reaction. "He what? I thought he wanted to continue to keep up appearances to avoid the scandal."

"I'll bet anything that Margaret is pregnant and her family's putting their collective feet down," Izzy said. Not the least trace of the admiration she had once held for her father remained in her words.

"Quite possibly," Maryse noted, waving the message. "He's informing me that he intends to take the Dearborn name and legacy, and that I am welcome to keep the Lightwood one, the house and anything related to it. He has no desire to be connected by anything to the family that insists to cause one scandal after another." She looked at the three of them. "What do you think?"

"Well, we're kind of used to Lightwood," Izzy said after a moment. "But I think I could get used to Trueblood if you prefer to take that name again."

Alec nodded, while Jace wasn't quite sure what he could contribute to the decision at all. He wasn't a Lightwood, for all that Alec had pointed out that as his _parabatai_ , he had every right to use the name.

"Jace?" Maryse asked him.

"Trueblood-Bane sounds kind of odd," Jace blurted out the first thing he could think of. More seriously, he added: "If you don't feel strongly one way or the other, I'd keep Lightwood, because that's the name all your commendations and everything else is in. Especially if Robert drops the name. It's a good name, with the notable exception of him."

Alec was trying to wipe the blush from his face. "Because 'Trueblood-Fairchild' sounds so much better?" he asked. "Weren't you considering not so long ago to make use of your right as _parabatai_ and take my name for your own?"

Maryse gave him a surprised look that Jace only noticed at the fringes of his awareness.

He had no bond to the Herondale family. The name was as foreign to him as Céline and Stephen were. He knew he wasn't a Wayland in any meaning of the term family. He couldn't ever go back to using the name Valentine had stolen.

But this – the Lightwoods – _they_ were his family. Maryse was the only mother he had ever known. Robert wasn't currently all that great at being a father, but at least he was equally awful to all four of them. Alec and Izzy were more than just friends – and not only because of the _parabatai_ bond they had. That had only formalized the relationship that had already grown between them.

These were the people he knew would always be there for him, no matter what happened. They were the people he was always going to be there for if he could at all find a way to do that. He would have trusted his life to anyone who was in the room with him right then without giving the matter a second thought.

"Jace?" Maryse asked again, clearly worried at the change of his expression.

He wasn't sure he'd be able to speak. His throat felt strange and his voice eluded him for a moment. Someone touched his arm, the contact soothing.

"I don't care which way you go with your name," he finally managed, the words still fighting against being put in the open. "But whichever way you go, can you take me with you?"

Maryse stared at him for a moment, before moving and pulling him into an embrace, making sure that he could draw away if he needed space.

He didn't remember when the last time had been that he'd allowed Maryse to hold him – like a mother might her son. Probably, he realized as he let himself sink into her arms, leaning his head against her shoulder, never. He'd been raised to think he didn't need that kind of comfort. Shouldn't need that kind of comfort.

But he did, and he probably should, because love didn't make a person weak and to love was _not_ to destroy. It was just another lie Valentine had fed him, like the tale of his origins – like his own name even.

"I didn't know you felt that way," Maryse told him. "Jace, I'd be proud to share the same name with you. You'd make any sensible mother proud – all three of you."

She held out one hand towards Alec and Izzy without letting go of Jace with the other. As if they had only waited for the invitation, the two joined them.

How could he ever have doubted where his family was?

There was Clary, though, still outside the circle of their linked arms, and he had to remedy that. She belonged with him as well.

Maryse was faster, waving her in. "Don't you want to come here, Clary?" she asked. "You're part of the family, too."

"Thank you," Jace whispered. He wasn't sure what he was thanking her for, precisely, but it felt right. "Mom." The last word was barely audible, and certainly low enough that Maryse could pretend not to have heard it if she preferred to. For all that she had treated him like a son – was treating him like a son – he wasn't.

He felt her pull him a little closer still, just as he thought he felt Alec smile through their bond.

"I'd be happy to hear that more often, Jace." Maryse' voice sounded strange – half smiling and half choked by something.

He'd have to explain this to Imogen somehow. That was something to think about later. For the moment, he focused on being content to know where he belonged.


	31. Chapter 31

_December 26 th, 2016_.

Jace had his hands folded on the table to keep them from twitching.

They had discovered another skill Clary was sorely lacking thanks to her mundane upbringing when the topic of being expected to attend the New Year's Ball had first come up: Dancing of the kind that didn't take place in the Pandemonium.

While Jace would surely be easily excused from any such thing, they had to assume that Clary would be asked to dance at least a few times. In order to satisfy customs, Alec probably should go through a few dances with her as well as with his sister and mother to begin with.

Dancing lessons were quickly becoming non-optional.

As it turned out, dancing lessons without music were not very effective.

If it hadn't been for Max, they would have used the gym in the Lightwood house and put an amplifier charm on one of their phones. With the boy in and around the house, they didn't want to risk it. They had gone to some lengths to conceal their devices from him, and they weren't going to stop now. Not without a much better reason than that, in any case.

Clary had thought of Herondale Manor, with the large living room that offered plenty of open space and contained a piano as well as a gramophone. "If Imogen lets us use that room and we can't find good records to practice with, you could play for us right there," she'd suggested.

The light in her eyes at the thought of hearing him play again had been enough to convince Jace that he wasn't going to put a lot of effort into finding good records.

Imogen hadn't needed much convincing. Simply putting the situation to her by fire message had been enough to receive an invitation, including the dates that would be convenient for her.

That had been four days ago. After his realization the last night, things had changed a little, as far as Jace was concerned. He couldn't take her up on her offer without talking to her about everything else first.

The other three had agreed when he had put it to them. They were waiting in the outer salon of the Herondale Manor while Jace asked to talk to his grandmother alone. Alec had offered to go with him, but he'd declined. This was one battle he had to go through on his own.

Knowing the others were near helped, though.

Imogen put a cup of coffee before him and settled on the other side of the table with one of her own.

"So, would you like to tell me why you look as if you expect me to throw you and your friends out of the house any moment?" she asked. "What have you done?"

"Nothing yet," Jace admitted, realizing only as he said it that that had come out a bit too fast.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"What are you going to do?"

"You know I've been looking into my parents' histories and everything." He had to start somewhere, after all. "My biological parents'… Céline and Stephen."

His grandmother nodded. "I sent you the answers you asked me for, and I hope you received them. So yes, I do know."

"We visited Céline's… " Grave? Did it even qualify as one? "The place where she's buried, yesterday."

A ghost of a smile appeared on Imogen's lips. "Do you want to push for having her disinterred and sent to the Silent City?"

That hadn't even occurred to him. "No. I don't think there'd be much left after twenty years, if anything," he told her truthfully. "I'll pay for a marker, though."

"I can—"

He shook his head forcefully. "I'll do it." Imogen hadn't felt the need to do that for two decades. There was no reason she should do so now. "Thinking about those two, trying to learn about them, to feel some kind of connection to them – it made me realize something."

He watched her reaction. "They're strangers to me. The only thing that connects me to them are their genes. Neither of them has anything to do with who I am today. When I think of my mother, I think of Maryse Lightwood. When I think of my father, I think of Robert."

"He has petitioned for a divorce to marry the Dearborn woman and take her name," Imogen reminded him.

He hoped he didn't seem too surprised that she knew that already, as he realized after the first second that she had probably known before the fire message to Maryse had gone out.

"He's not very … shall we say, supportive of any of you right now?"

Jace shrugged. "Yeah, well… you can't choose your father, can you?" He realized the irony in that statement. "He's still the man who raised me – much better than Valentine did." Worse would have been difficult, he had to admit. Not in everything, of course. Valentine had been an efficient teacher at least, and he'd never felt like he was missing anything when he'd been a boy.

His grandmother's expression grew serious, sadness clouding her eyes as she understood. "You want to be Jace Lightwood."

"I already am. I'll never be a real Herondale – no more than I could have been a Morgenstern. The Lightwoods are where I belong." He met her eyes as calmly as he could. "It's only right to finally make it official. I should have taken the name when Alec and I became _parabatai_. No - I should have asked Maryse and Robert to make it official and adopt me before that."

"Why didn't you?" she sounded more interested than upset.

The answer came immediately. "Because at the time I thought wanting to belong to the family like that – feeling that I belonged to the family like that even – was wrong, and weak, and that I had to fight that."

"Valentine's teaching?"

He inclined his head in a slow nod.

"But now you don't?"

"Now I don't."

Imogen looked at her cup, then back at Jace. "What changed?"

He felt a half-smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "I grew up."

*

Imogen listened to the music wafting up from below as she pretended to work.

Jace was playing beautifully, and even when he was just providing the background to Clary's dancing lessons, it was impossible to mistake his skill for anything short of mastery.

She wondered when, exactly, had been the point of no return for her and her grandson.

Had that really been the moment when she had tried to force her will on him, driving him from her home – in a way she had still not managed to figure out?

The more she thought about it, the more she suspected that she'd ruined her chances with the boy long before that. No, she mentally corrected herself. Jace wasn't a boy. He was an independent young man, strong and confident but also caring about others, and she had no doubt that she had Maryse Lightwood to thank for that, rather than Valentine.

He was right – Maryse was what came closest to a mother in his life.

Thinking back, she was afraid that she had destroyed any chance that he would ever be willing to truly become part of her family – a once-proud family of which only a single person still remained now – by the treatment she had shown him before she had known about his origins.

Or maybe even farther back – when, the first time they had met in person, she had just sentenced Izzy to a deruning to retrieve the Mortal Cup.

She still agreed with her former self that retrieving that Instrument had been necessary – but couldn't she have come up with some other way to do it? Why couldn't she have decided, in that moment in which Lydia understood that what they'd been doing was wrong, that she would, for once, be merciful?

But it wouldn't have been mercy. It would have been just plain decency, and it seemed she'd lost all of that in her bitterness over her son's and husband's deaths.

Didn't the fact that she'd all but forgotten about Céline, sparing the poor girl not a single thought until Jace asked her about her, back in New York, prove that the person she'd become didn't deserve a family of her own?

No. She could do better. She could learn to do better again. She would. She wasn't that old.

She hoped she'd done the right thing when she'd refused to take back the ring she had given Jace.

She'd told him the same thing that she had told herself that day Jace had first informed her he'd rather change his name to Lightwood than let her press him into the Herondale heritage.

If Stephen had been the woman and Céline the man, then even if he had grown up with his natural parents, his name would most likely not have been Herondale. That wouldn't have made him any less her grandson.

It had been a tense moment for her.

If his decision was truly meant as making a statement about the family that had raised him, the family he felt he belonged to, then surely he could keep the ring that showed his relationship to the family he had been taken from the moment he was born.

If his decision was about putting more distance specifically between himself and her, then he would have every reason to refuse.

He'd accepted her words, and pocketed the ring. She wasn't sure she'd ever see it again in the open. It was his decision to make, but she had had plenty of opportunity to understand that Jace was nothing if not consistent. He wouldn't go showing off the Herondale insignia after choosing to cement his association with the Lightwoods, no matter what benefits it would give him.

Imogen allowed herself a sigh. It was impossible to miss, even if she had made every effort to do just that only a few weeks ago, that the Lightwoods were where Jace belonged. They had that bond that spoke of family even though they shared no blood – other than the symbolic exchange between Alec and Jace in the _parabatai_ ceremony.

Another thought occurred to her. If Jace wouldn't be part of her family, maybe she could still be part of his nevertheless. Jace was her grandson. Alec was his _parabatai_ , which gave him the status of a brother by blood. Isabelle was their sister.

Her expression softened as Imogen spun that thought further.

Maybe she hadn't lost a grandchild today.

Maybe she'd actually gained a few.

*

His talk with Imogen had gone better than he had expected, Jace thought as he played, his mind barely on the music while Alec and Izzy were taking Clary through the steps of a waltz – a slow one, less likely to cause her to trip over her own feet, or Alec's.

Imogen hadn't thrown them out of the house immediately. She hadn't called him insane and she hadn't even tried to change his mind about anything.

It was almost as if she'd already expected it to happen.

She hadn't given up entirely, clearly. She'd insisted he keep that ring. It was in his pocket now, where it would remain until they got home and he had to make a decision on what he would do with it. It would probably be best if he locked it away somewhere safe. He couldn't wear it, even on a necklace, now.

She'd also made it very clear that they were still free to use the piano – today or any other day they needed it.

That was less surprising the more he thought about it. It gave him reason to visit her.

He thought about what she'd said about remaining her grandson even if he didn't use her name. It was true. He couldn't help that connection. Some days, he didn't mind it. Then there were moments when he wished he'd never met Imogen Herondale at all.

How did Izzy stand spending time with her after what she'd tried to do to her? Was it possible that she'd forgiven her?

Jace found that hard to imagine. She was probably pulling herself together and putting her distaste aside for his sake. He had to catch her alone to talk to her about that, and soon. Preferably before the next time they came here.

Alec cleared his throat, loudly, breaking through Jace's thoughts.

He turned his head, looking at the others. They had stopped moving and were watching him.

"That's beautiful, Jace," Clary told him when their eyes met. "But much too fast and with far too many flourishes for me at this point. Can you take it back to the boring slow and simple?"

"Oops." The more he had focused on his thoughts, the more he must have allowed his hands to be carried away by the music. He smoothly transitioned back into something more fitting for beginner's lessons. "As my lady commands."

 

_December 27 th, 2016_

"We're looking for something special," Clary said, speaking slowly although she had prepared the words she wanted to say on their way to the store.

That morning, Izzy had decided that it was time they put her command of the local language to the test. They'd been using it more and more among themselves, and given Clary a Speak-in-Tongues taste of it a couple of times to help her get a better feel for how the words should sound.

Today, the two women were out shopping together. There was one important thing that they still needed to acquire, and quickly. It was only four days until New Year's Eve after all.

"A present for our brother." The word for brother-in-law suddenly eluded her, but "brother" would hopefully do.

The shop they had come to was at the edge of the old town core, where houses were somewhat larger already, but not yet surrounded by full gardens. It was special in that the entire building was dedicated to the business, rather than being partially used for residential purposes.

They had looked around a little already, going through the weapons on offer and discarding most as either too extravagant or not impressive enough.

"What is his preferred weapon?" the salesman who had walked up to them only moments before inquired.

"Bow and arrow," Clary answered. "But he should have a … _backup_."

Izzy repeated the last word in the proper language before adding. "Sword or feather staff would be ideal."

"What is the preferred material?"

Initially, Clary had been surprised to learn that the weapons shops did not sell anything made of adamas. On second thoughts, it was only logical: Adamas was forged by the Iron Sisters and distributed as needed. The adamas weapons were handed out for missions and returned to the institute. Personal weapons were made of other materials, usually with properties of their own that would help them in their work. Izzy's electrum whip had certainly proven its effectiveness.

Sure, there were _some_ weapons that contained adamas that belonged to individual Nephilim, but like Alec's arrows, those were regular weapons into which small amounts of the angelic material were embedded, rather than the solid Seraph blades.

They didn't actually have a preference for what they were trying to find.

"What's your budget?" the man asked, scrutinizing them as if trying to guess at the contents of their wallets.

Izzy looked at Clary, who took a deep breath before she explained: "We recently received a sum in recognition for a particular… mission." She didn't know what else she could have called it. "And my fiancé will contribute, too, so I think we can go for fancy. As long as it's properly functional."

The sales clerk's face darkened a fraction. "All our weapons are properly functional," he said.

"Then you won't mind showing us some," Izzy told him sweetly. "My brother is tall, so we're looking for something on the long end of the range."

With a curt nod, the man led them to a wall where polearms were displayed, suspended from hooks and grips mounted in the masonry.

"Iron and steel," he said, pointing out a series of weapons. "Good when he goes up against Seelie. The shafts are available in different kinds of wood, and can be adjusted to what he is most likely to encounter."

Izzy ran her hand over one of the staves topped with three sharp, slightly angled blades on one end. The wood was a solid length of oak but had patterned inlays of various other woods, the differences in color and grain adjusted so well to each other that the resulting weapon could have passed as a piece of art.

The price quoted on the tag was high, but not unreasonably so.

"I like this." Checking that the clerk did not disapprove, Izzy took the weapon down to test its balance. "Actually, I love it." She handed it to Clary so she, too, could get its feel.

Clary tried to mirror her friend's movements and not look too much as if she had no idea of what she was doing. She handed the polearm back to Izzy with a nod. "I'll bow to your greater wisdom, but I like it, too" she declared.

"I'd buy it in an instant," Izzy said. "I'm just not sure how he'll carry it in addition to his quiver and bow."

A weapon that long couldn't be sheathed like a sword. It had to be carried on the wielder's back when not in use. For Alec, of course, that would be something of a problem.

The salesman's eyes had come to rest on Izzy's whip while she had tested the staff. He gestured towards it. "Have you thought about getting him an electrum bracelet? They stow away on the body without taking up much space."

Izzy felt her eyebrows rise up at the suggestion. "Do you have any?" While not immensely rare, they were certainly uncommon, and accordingly expensive.

"We have a few, actually," he said. "They're used, though, and some require some work."

"We'd like to have a look," Clary told him upon Izzy's prompting glance.

They were taken to a low display in the next room, a counter-top of glass providing a good view of the goods placed inside. The weapons were folded into their bracelet shapes, but each lay before a drawing of what the extended forms were. Electrum weapons were often spelled to hold at least two shapes, in the same way that Izzy's own serpent bracelet had a whip and a staff hidden in it.

Some of those on offer converted into as many as six or seven different weapons, but those were virtually unaffordable. It was hard to imagine anyone carrying something that pricey into combat, which was probably why they hadn't been sold yet: No one in their right mind would spend that amount of money on something that was at a high risk of being damaged every day.

Some others were terribly old-fashioned, including one that turned from a bracelet decorated with the head of a bird of prey into a Victorian-era swordstick.

Izzy pointed at a band of brightly shining material, forming a panther curled around the arm, with the tail as an additional coil. It was placed before the drawing of a staff with several detail images of blades at its top.

"Can we have a look at that one?" The price would be just within budget, which seemed low for something with more than two conversions.

"I would recommend against that one unless you have the means to work on it and a warlock to redo the spells," the clerk cautioned, though he pulled out a key to open the case. "It's become very sluggish and some of the material is no longer fitted firmly."

She nodded. "I have some skill in working on weapons. Including electrum ones." It had been an interest of hers since she'd been very young – to the point where she had considered joining the Iron Sisters once.

Holding out her hand, she let the man place the bracelet on her palm.

With a practiced motion, she snapped it into its staff shape. She could see what he meant by 'sluggish'. In her whip, the magic that changed the material's shape acted so fast that the staff was complete by the time her arm was stretched out all the way. In this one, she could watch the material flow and stretch for a few seconds afterwards before it solidified again.

Well, Magnus surely would be able to help with that.

Izzy snapped out the blades, one by one, watching them sprout and take shape. She could feel some of the ornamentation on the staff, serving the purpose of providing a better and more secure grip, shift under her fingers, and examined that section more closely.

It would take some work, but she was reasonably sure that she would be able to fix that with some patience.

The one thing she wasn't sure about was whether they would be able to fix electrum and magic before New Year's Eve.

"The sooner I'll get started on it, the better," she decided as she let the piece convert back into its panther shape.

They paid without trying to bargain. Finding that piece just within budget probably counted as Gale luck, and they'd noticed that none of the younger Gales ever challenged their luck by demanding more than it gave them on its own.

"I can give you a brief introduction to electrum work if you like," Izzy told Clary as they left. "I wouldn't mind an extra pair of hands when I work on this."

Clary chuckled at her words. "Sure. That'll be fun. Let me know if you ever run out of lessons you can give me."

Izzy gave her friend a grin. "Not for a long time, I fear."

*

_December 28 th, 2016_

Clary moved into another turn, a happy grin on her face. For once, she wasn't hopelessly behind everyone else.

That morning, Aline and Helen, who had started to join them in their morning training most days, had pointed out that the winter had been cold enough for long enough to make the ice on standing waters safe for skating.

They hadn't needed much convincing.

Jace had immediately promised to come along to watch and laugh if any of them had forgotten how to skate since the last time they'd been in Idris for the winter.

Even Lydia had decided to join them for a while.

Asking Tatyana if she wanted to come along had been intended as a mere formality. No one had expected her to actually agree to it. While she dutifully dropped by in time for training, and was regaining some degree of proficiency under Maryse's strict drill and with strategic use of fingerless gloves marked with adhesive runes to give her a hold on weapons, it was impossible to miss that she still was near panic every time she ventured outside.

No matter how much they would have liked to give her a couple of calming charms, they couldn't.

Forcing knowledge of anything on her that she wasn't supposed to share with anyone else wasn't fair. No one blamed her for declaring that she wasn't going to try and refuse answers if questioned.

It had come as all the more of a surprise when she'd nodded.

"Maybe it's easier if everyone is there," she'd said in that half-tongued slur they'd all gotten plenty of practice understanding by now. "I'll give it a try at least."

So they'd set out, the group staying tightly together.

Shadowhunter skates were different from the ones Clary knew from back home in that they were merely metal blades strapped to whatever shoes or boots one already wore, but they worked just the same.

It had been years since the last time she'd skated, and it took her a few rounds to gain confidence – but that was true for most of the others as well, and no one went so far as to turn on their equilibrium runes to help – or cheat, as Jace had called it when Aline had suggested it, seeing Izzy and Alec try to get into a rhythm initially.

There were other skaters on the lake, of all ages, some using the opportunity to get in a bit of extra training, others clearly there for the enjoyment more than anything else.

Secure in her balance after a few rounds and turns, Clary tried a spin and then came to a neat halt for a moment before setting off again, joining Alec and Izzy in a race across the length of the lake.

"Should we sneak a stability charm onto the ice with this many people on it?" she asked the two with a wink when she reached the goal they had set for themselves side by side with Izzy and just a little behind Alec, who had put the benefit of his longer legs to good use.

He turned to look around at the crowd that had collected on the ice by now.

"Nah," he said. "I've seen it with a lot more people on it and it's held up fine. I think they do put runes somewhere to keep it from breaking."

With a quick half-turn, he started skating backwards. "Ready for another one?"

"Yeah," Izzy agreed. "Back to the others."

Aline and Helen both clearly were experienced skaters, performing tricks Clary couldn't hope to master. She was somewhat relieved to see that her other friends were just as much in awe of their fancy skating as she was.

Lydia was the most careful one of their group, trying to avoid any risk of falling and re-injuring her arm. She'd taken up some careful weapons' training with it, but hadn't quite reached the point where she truly trusted the healing.

For once, it hadn't taken long for Tatyana to bypass her in confidence.

"I was good at this once," she admitted, almost apologetically, when she noticed the others watching her.

"Once?" Izzy asked, eyebrows raised. "Considering the break you took, I'd say you still are."

Clary let herself glide past them. "Speaking of breaks," she said, "I think I'm going to take one now."

True to her words, she took off her skates and crossed the distance from the edge of the lake to where Jace was sitting and watching.

"Hey," she said, leaning down for a kiss.

"Tired of it already?" he wanted to know.

She did a half-turn and sat on his lap, leaning into him. "Cold, is more like it." She hummed contently as she settled. "Mmmh. You're nice and warm."

She could feel, as well as hear, him chuckle as he leaned his head against her.

"Put a warming charm in your own jeans then," he suggested. He'd started to do just that, making sure that he didn't cool out. It spared him the need to actually take a blanket along when he intended to spend more time outdoors, and took away one concern about going on longer rides.

In spite of his words, he put his arms around her and held her close.

Taking that as an invitation, she snuggled into him, enjoying his warm presence and watching the others.

Aline was just showing them one of her special moves when he leaned in again. "You need to shift a little," he told Clary, his voice low. "You're growing heavy."

She complied before she registered what he had said. As soon as she did, she twisted around to look at him. "Was that a joke?"

He shook his head, a happy grin on his face. "No. It's starting to work. It's still very distant and vague, but I feel the pressure."

His expression was mirrored on her face. "Since when?"

"Since now. Or at least I'm sure since now. I thought there was a bit earlier today but that could have been phantom feelings." He rested his head against her shoulder. "In other words: My angel blood has finally received the memo."

"Do we tell everyone?"

Jace shook his head. "Just Alec and Izzy and Maryse, when we're alone. Everyone else can wait until I can actually move a bit to provide proof."

 

_December 29 th, 2016_

It had taken them a little effort to convince Jace to come along with them for one last shopping tour of the year. If he'd had his way, he would have spent every free minute of his day trying to speed up the re-establishment of connections in his back by sheer will power.

While he understood that, objectively speaking, the progress he made was insanely fast, it still felt too slow to him now that something was actually happening.

By the time they had gone riding that day, he had a degree of sensation on the fronts and insides of his thighs – enough to rejoice in the pressure of the saddle leather against his legs. He had put hours, both the last night and that morning, into trying to get a reaction out of his muscles, and eventually managed to produce a deliberate twitch. It wasn't much yet, but it was more than he'd been able to do two days ago.

Left to his own devices, he would have continued trying until it was time for bed.

He hadn't welcomed Izzy's suggestion that they should all venture out into town again together, to stock up their wardrobes for the ball with some matching accessories – and possibly to find a ball gown for Clary so she wouldn't have to borrow Izzy's second-best.

Between Clary's pleading look and Alec's firm reminder that his progress would only be slowed if he didn't allow himself any breaks, he had finally agreed to join them.

"We should have a common theme," Izzy suggested as they walked through the streets, bound for their destination. "Something that'll tell everyone we four belong together. And we should get an extra for Magnus, because I really hope that by the next time we go to any such event, he'll be able to come with us without causing a scandal."

They'd thought about asking Imogen if there was any chance of getting permission for Magnus to join them for the ball, but decided against it. Specifically, Magnus had decided against it.

"I'd do it if you insist, Alexander," he'd told Alec, "but I'd hate being there just tolerated on special permission, with everyone watching me and waiting for whatever scandalous thing I might get up to."

"What are you thinking of, Iz?" Alec's voice was a little wary.

His sister beamed at him. "I don't know yet. At least a matching color scheme? Brooches or something might be nice."

"It's probably too much to hope that your proposed color scheme would be mysterious black," Jace said.

Izzy glared at him. "Blue and silver," she declared. "All of us can get away with wearing blue and silver."

"Lucky thing you didn't say 'red and gold' to match the Lightwood sigil," Clary laughed.

Her friend made a face. "I thought about it, but we'd look like some mundane Christmas tree. So no."

"Black with _a little_ blue and silver," Alec suggested, ignoring the alternative.

"Black with some very few blue and silver highlights," Jace improved on his idea.

Izzy rolled her eyes at both of them. "Oh, alright. We'll see what we can find."

"Keep in mind I can't just quickly try on anything," Jace reminded her. "And we're a bit late for having anything custom-made for us, so why don't we go with the brooches idea for now and take care of matching outfits for the _next_ time we attend a ball?"

"Let's at least see what we can find," Izzy insisted. "Who knows when we'll have the opportunity again?"

"A year from now," Alec told her practically. "Let's take care of the necessities first and see how much time we have left after that."

"Necessi- _ties_?" his sister asked, looking at him in surprise. "Anything other than a gown for Clary?"

"Yes," Alec confirmed. "Shoes for me that aren't combat boots and that won't leave me unable to walk the next morning if I dance in them most of the night. As far as I know, I'll be taking _you_ to the ball, and I remember very well what amount of exercise that will require."

"And there I was hoping you'd dance with Clary in my place, _parabatai_ ," Jace laughed.

A pained expression settled on Alec's face. "Definitely different shoes for me," he concluded. "Or else I _will_ wear my boots to the ball."

*

Maryse opened the door and found herself looking at a visitor she hadn't expected at all.

"Jace went out with the others," she said.

Inquisitor Herondale gave her a look that could be interpreted as a smile with only a little stretch of the imagination. "I was hoping to talk to you, actually."

"To me?" Maryse cleared the entrance. Whatever Jace's grandmother wanted from her, it was probably best not discussed in the open front door. She feared that she knew what this would be about: Jace's declaration that he belonged with the Lightwoods.

As much as she could understand Imogen's wish to have her heir, she couldn't blame Jace for his decision. She wouldn't tell him to reconsider.

She led Imogen into the living room and offered her a seat.

"What can I help you with?" She couldn't very well start out by telling her that she wasn't going to do what she suspected Imogen wanted of her.

"I wanted to thank you," Imogen said.

That came as a surprise. "Thank me?"

The old woman nodded. "For everything you did for Jace in the last nine years."

"Anyone would have done the same," Maryse claimed.

"Would they?" Imogen held her eyes. "I wonder. He's very loyal to you."

"I won't apologize for that."

"I'm not asking you to." Imogen closed her eyes for a moment. "Why does everyone in this family seem to think that I am some kind of harpy, ready to tear you apart?"

"You are Inquisitor Herondale," Maryse pointed out. "You have a reputation."

Imogen made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sigh. "Unfortunately. I never thought I would regret that one day."

Uncertain of how to respond, Maryse waited with only an acknowledging nod.

"After tomorrow's ceremony, you'll be the head of the Lightwood family. Or the Trueblood one, if you decide to go back to your old name," Imogen observed.

"Lightwood," Maryse told her. "It's a perfectly good name, and I've been a Lightwood for longer than I was a Trueblood. There's no point in letting the Lightwood name die out to bring Trueblood back."

"Jace prefers Lightwood to Herondale." It was a statement, her voice kept entirely neutral.

Maryse nodded. "We never thought he wanted to give up 'Wayland'. Otherwise, we would have taken care of that years ago. He's as much a son to me as Alec and Max are."

"He's still my grandson."

There was defiance in Maryse's eyes now. "It's his choice to make. I will not take that away from him."

Imogen let her eyes wander around the room for a moment. The Lightwoods' living room was small when compared to her own, the furniture well-maintained but used. Everything had its place, but not in the way it was in her own house, where the rooms were arranged like pieces of art.

"I wasn't going to suggest that," she said after another moment. "But clearly, if Jace is my grandson and Alexander and Isabelle are his brother and sister, then they must be my grandchildren, too. And your youngest."

"Max," Maryse repeated automatically. Was Imogen just offering them a blanket Herondale association? She fought to keep a straight face as she imagined what Robert would say to _that_ _._

"Max. How is he doing after his injury?"

Now it was Maryse's turn to sigh. "Not as well as he could be doing if he put more effort into his recovery. He wants things to be the way they were, but the work he has to put into it discourages him. I wish he'd take a page out of Jace's book."

"How do you do it?" Imogen asked. "Even after I've seen with my own eyes that Jace still is a better fighter than I am at this point of my life, I'm dreading the day he leaves Idris again."

"By trusting my children and their ability to judge what they can or cannot handle," Maryse replied evenly.

"Max was injured after tracking Jonathan Morgenstern by a single hair, I heard," Imogen said, changing the subject.

Upon the other woman's nod, she continued: "We could use that kind of talent in the inquisitor's office. If he could be interested in trying out that career instead of life in the field – I would gladly give him the opportunity to intern with us."


	32. Chapter 32

"Remind me to never go shopping with you again," Jace said as they came back into the streets, though his grin belied the content of his words.

"You are going to look amazing," Clary promised him.

"I always look amazing," he returned, his voice perfectly serious.

Alec swatted at him. "Don't get conceited or I'll have to challenge you to a round of archery with counting points."

Jace grinned up at his _parabatai_. "You may shoot better than I, but I still look better while shooting."

They laughed, interrupted only when someone pushed through their group, face dark and muttering under his breath about idiots taking up the entire street.

Turning, Alec stared after him.

"You know who that was?"

"Yeah." Izzy rubbed a spot where the man had elbowed her on his way past. "Adrian Hawkfeather the bow manipulator."

"Good to know he's in Idris." Jace was suddenly serious again. "We can start thinking about how to get him to confess then."

"Confront him with the evidence?" Clary suggested. "See how he reacts when he sees Magnus' pictures?"

Alec shook his head. "Not without witnesses. We'd only forewarn him. What is it, Iz?"

His sister had pulled something out of the outer pocket of her backpack and was holding it between two fingers, touching as little of it as possible.

"He slipped something into my bag. I thought he was running into me a lot more forcefully than he was into any of you…"

Using one fingernail, she pried open the lid and winced as the familiar scent hit her nose.

"Is that what I think it is?" Alec asked, fury barely contained in his voice and posture.

" _Yin fen_. I swear this isn't mine!"

"Of course it isn't," Jace and Alec said as one.

Izzy pressed down on the lid and held the little container out to them. "One of you take this. I don't want it on me just in case there'll be a surprise inspection of my things in a moment."

"Put it in my backpack," Jace suggested. "I'm still the least likely to be bothered, at least until tomorrow night."

Clary took the tin from her friend and complied. "I don't quite see what he thought he could achieve by that," she said as she wiped her hands on her jeans as if the mere contact with the outside of the tin had left some traces of the substance on her that she needed to be rid of. "All of us could vouch for you and you haven't left Idris other than by portal – and didn't your father say you can't portal in demonic substances anymore?"

"I don't think they would have cared about that." Izzy was clearly relieved that the container was gone from her possession. "Maybe there's an Idris-internal trade? There certainly are vampires outside of Alicante."

"He must have gotten it in somehow," Alec added. "Or from somewhere."

"The tin looks like the one Aldertree had," Izzy told them.

Jace grimaced at that. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Should we be discussing this in the street?"

Alec looked at Clary, then up and down between the houses. There wasn't a lot of traffic around them. More specifically, since Hawkfeather had disappeared from view, they were the only people in sight.

"I think we should be discussing this with Inquisitor Herondale," he decided. "Someone sneaking drugs into people's bags surely should be of interest to her."

Izzy seemed hesitant. "Do you think she'll believe us?"

"I hope so," Alec returned. "It's our best shot… We can't just get rid of the tin and pretend we never had it. If someone wants to frame us for possession, they'll find another way. I don't really know who else we can talk to about it with the slightest chance of being believed."

"Let's give her an opportunity to prove she means her commitment to all of us," Jace suggested, turning towards home already. "We can send her a fire message and ask to talk to her, then take it from there."

*

Maryse had made tea for Imogen and herself, and the two had settled down to talk some more. Imogen listened with interest as Maryse told her about the time Jace had spent with the Lightwood family and his exploits as a teen.

It didn't escape Maryse' attention that the inquisitor took care to ask her questions so as to encompass the entire trio.

Maryse wasn't entirely sure what she thought of the idea that Imogen Herondale was planning to virtually adopt all her children as her grandchildren. Then again, it wasn't as if they _had_ any living grandparents, so there wasn't anyone who might feel displaced. Maybe known close contact with Imogen Herondale could even serve to protect them from further attempts on their lives or their honor.

She interrupted her tale when she heard the front door open.

"There they are," she announced.

"I should probably get going then," Imogen said. "They'll think I came to convince you to talk them into changing their minds."

"As if I could," Maryse chuckled as she went to call the four to join them in the living room for a moment.

She grew serious the moment she saw the expressions on their faces. "What's wrong?"

"Someone is trying to get us into trouble," Alec said flatly.

Maryse couldn't help a small groan. "Again? It seems to be becoming something of a permanent condition at the moment."

"Yeah." Alec didn't even try to hide his displeased expression under a neutral face. "We need to get an appointment with Inquisitor Herondale ASAP."

"Try the living room," his mother suggested.

"The—"

Jace was maneuvering past her already to follow her words.

He didn't waste time asking her what she was doing in their home. "Grandmother," he said instead, barely giving her the time to acknowledge his presence before coming straight to the point. "We need your help."

"Then you shall have it," Imogen replied. Blanket promises usually weren't her thing, but it was probably time to follow Maryse's example and trust that these three – or four – knew what they were doing.

Jace unhooked the backpack from the back of his chair and pulled it onto his lap while Alec, Izzy and Clary came to stand around him.

"We ran into Adrian Hawkfeather today," Alec said, slipping once again into the role of their leader and spokesperson. "He's one of the people from the New York Institute. We have reason to suspect he tampered with my bow and caused that accident."

Imogen nodded, indicating for him to go on. She kept her face carefully interested without judging. She didn't know where this was going, but it wasn't hard to guess that they were giving her more confidence today than they ever had before. Surely, if they were doing that, they did it because they thought they had no other choice – not because they had suddenly decided that she had earned their trust. Imogen Herondale was nothing if not a realistic woman.

"Specifically, he ran into us. Literally. We were just coming out of a shop, and he pushed right through us. He must have slipped something into one of our bags, because it definitely wasn't there in the shop, but it was there when he was gone." He tapped his _parabatai'_ s shoulder. "Show her, Jace?"

Jace dug out a little silver tin and put it on the table before giving it a small push that slid it close enough for her to pick it up.

She suspected she knew what it was before she touched it, but she took it, snapped it open and inspected the contents nevertheless. "He put that into your backpack?" she asked, looking at Jace.

"No." Izzy said in his place. "Mine. The way he brushed past seemed deliberate, so I checked my things to see if I was missing anything – and found the opposite."

"Do you have proof that he did it?" Imogen asked.

"He was the only one who had the opportunity," Jace told her. "There was no one else there but him and us."

His grandmother put the tin back down. "That won't hold up very well in an investigation. We'd need a bit more than that. I'll have this examined, but I would assume he didn't leave any traces of himself on it. Which of you touched it?"

"Izzy and I," Jace said."

"And I, when I put it in your backpack," Clary added.

"If I was Hawkfeather and trying to get us into trouble, I would have gone right to the inquisitor's office afterwards and claimed to have seen something to have us found and searched." Alec gestured vaguely. "I'm a little surprised we made it home without anyone stopping us."

Imogen considered that for a second. "I'm not sure. If he'd done that, his name would have been taken down and he'd have been officially involved. He may want to avoid that. My best guess is that he was hoping that Isabelle would cave and use the _yin fen_." She looked at Izzy. "If you'd have shown symptoms of withdrawal or been busy finding a way to top up your supply by the time of the New Year's Ball, surely _someone_ would have noticed."

"What do you suggest we do?"

"I'll take the tin and have one of my own people analyze it just in case he _did_ leave some traces on it after all," Imogen said. "And we'll keep an eye on Mr. Hawkfeather. If his current plan isn't working, he'll try again, or differently."

"That would be easier if we knew when and where that will be," Clary muttered.

"I can make a hunch." Imogen wrapped the tin in a handkerchief before pocketing it. "If I was trying something like that, I'd use the ball. Lots of people, maximum effect if anything happens."

Alec nodded. "He's not working alone," he said, carefully watching Imogen's reaction. "Hawkfeather, I mean. He's probably only following orders, so whatever happens next may be done by someone else."

"Then we'll just have to be particularly attentive in general," the inquisitor declared. She didn't seem too surprised by his announcement.

"What do we do if someone _does_ show up looking for _yin fen_?" Izzy asked. Having their rooms searched would be inconvenient. Even without the _yin fen_ , they had accumulated quite a bit of contraband over the last weeks, after all.

Imogen's face was set in a grim expression. "You send them right to me. If anyone's coming to conduct a search and I'm not personally with them, they're doing so without orders."

 

_December 30 th, 2016_

The Dearborns were an influential family. Divorces were not extremely high on the Iron Sisters' list of priorities, and getting one of them to come to Idris to preside over the proceedings on such short notice would have been impossible for most.

As it was, when the right people called, even an Iron Sister could be convinced to make the time.

Margaret Dearborn stood at Robert's elbow when Maryse and her children entered, precisely on time. She was dressed as if for a wedding, rather than to witness a divorce, and her expression left no doubt that she considered the occasion a joyous one.

Robert's was more serene, though his apparel matched his future wife's in splendor. Doubtlessly, the same person had been in charge of choosing both their outfits.

Maryse crossed the room with measured steps, her simple, dark dress a striking counterpoint to the glamorous looks of her soon-to-be ex-husband and his companion.

Alec walked with her to witness the proceedings, while the others took seats at the side of the room, with Jace backing up against the wall next to the end of the narrow bench placed there.

Max wore a gloomy expression. The youngest Lightwood son clearly did not approve of his parents' decision.

When Robert glanced their way, his gaze rested disapprovingly on Jace for a moment before turning to give his daughter a frowning scrutiny.

"Does Isabelle seem unusually tense to you?" he asked Maryse without looking away.

"She's probably wondering if she has toothpaste on her face, the way you're staring at her," his wife returned with a somewhat acerbic tone to her voice. "If she's tense it's because Max insisted to come along and she feels responsible for his good behavior."

"None of them needed to come along," Robert said curtly. "This didn't need to be more than a matter between you and me."

"It's a matter for family."

Margaret gave a sniff that didn't sound particularly lady-like. "Then what are the Herondale boy and the Fairchild girl doing here?"

"The Herondale boy, as you call him, is as much a son to me as Alec and Max are," Maryse informed her. "He's also my eldest's _parabatai_ and therefore as much a Lightwood as any of us. Clary is his fiancée, which also makes her family."

A muscle twitched in Robert's jaw and his expression grew stony. Neither Maryse nor Alec needed to turn around to guess that Imogen had entered the room and taken her place with the Lightwoods.

Before he could comment on that, however, the woman in charge of the proceedings tapped her ceremonial staff on the floor once, the ringing sound produced by it announcing that the ceremony was about to begin.

Maryse and Robert turned towards her, walking side by side to stand in front of a table high enough so they could rest their hands on it, exposing the marriage runes to everyone's sight.

A hush fell over the room when the doors opened again and one last person entered: An Iron Sister, dressed in the misty grey robes of her order, her dark, curly hair held under control by a woven circlet of silvery metal.

Where her robes fell open, they exposed loose clothing of the same silky material, cut elegantly but perfectly suitable for combat. The Iron Sisters were always ready to put the weapons they forged to use, even if only in theory. She wore a seraph blade on her hip and an adamas dagger in a sheath before it.

"Maryse and Robert Lightwood," she said once she had taken her place across from them, her dark eyes boring into their faces with a probing look that seemed to go deeper than skin. "What is it you desire?"

"I wish to be divorced from my wife and have our union dissolved," Robert spoke first. "I want to disassociate myself from the name Lightwood and anything connected to it. This is not my family. I want—"

The Iron Sister raised a hand, silencing him. "I believe we all have understood your meaning," she said mildly, but with an edge to her voice that cut as truly as the blades she wore would. "Maryse?"

"The lesser marriage runes have faded. I wish that our union be completely dissolved," Maryse declared calmly. She was reasonably sure that the Iron Sister's interest in the proceedings extended solely to the question of whether or not she agreed to having her rune cut, and not to the subsequent administrative issues.

It appeared that she was right.

"Then so shall it be," the Iron Sister intoned, drawing her dagger.

Maryse did not flinch when the tip of the blade broke her skin just below the wrist, though her face hardened as it was pulled across the back of her hand, leaving a bloody line down the middle from wrist to knuckles.

They said that deruning was one of the most painful experiences the Nephilim could be subjected to.

Having the rune merely cut was quite enough as far as she was concerned. It was a pain that went far beyond anything that a sharp blade through the skin should have produced. She didn't know if it was the material of the blade, the properties of the rune or some part of the binding and breaking ceremony that only the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters knew about: The cut burned as if treated with caustic liquid, and the pain spread through the lines of the sliced rune, burning itself through her flesh and into a deeper level of her being.

She pushed it to a corner of her mind, the same way she would have done if wounded in battle. She couldn't let it consume her attention, though it certainly tried to.

At the Iron Sister's nod, she raised her hand off the surface, slowing the flow of blood and permitting Alec to wrap the cut with a compress and gauze. This wasn't a cut that would heal from an _iratze_.

She did not look at Robert as his rune was cut in the same fashion, though she wondered idly where they were going to put his new marriage rune. Considering the speed at which the Dearborns were proceeding, it wouldn't have surprised her if they were planning to whisk him away right from this ceremony to the next.

Come to think of it, given both his and his lover's attire, it seemed a very likely course of things.

"It is done," the Iron Sister declared. No one had given her name and she hadn't introduced herself to any of them. She was there to perform the divorce and nothing else. It was her status that was important, not her person.

It was a reminder that the Iron Sisters, just like the Silent Brothers, were not quite on the same level with the other Nephilim. Maryse couldn't help but wonder what secrets the woman who had just destroyed the wedded union rune on her hand knew.

Robert turned to leave without a word as soon as the Iron Sister had walked out.

Maryse moved to step into his way and stop him. "Let me know when you want to collect your things from the house," she said. "You will no longer be able to come and go as you please."

"I don't know when I'll have the time for it." Robert's voice sounded harsh with the strain of suppressing something – the pain from his cut hand, his distaste for the house protected by charms that had singled him out as part of the enemy, or a mixture of both, probably. "I may have to send someone for that."

"Just do it reasonably soon." Maryse nodded at him, then gave a marginally warmer nod to Margaret Dearborn. She didn't have any particular feelings towards the woman. In another situation, she might have felt that Margaret had stolen her husband, but Robert had never been very good at being faithful, and there had been near-separations between them several times before. They hadn't lived as a married couple for a long time. No, Margaret was not at fault for Robert's behavior – though her family surely had been the driving force behind the eventual divorce.

They had agreed to continue their marriage formally for the sake of politics and to protect the family's integrity and reputation. After the things she had learned in the last few weeks, Maryse couldn't find any regret in her that he had chosen not to honor that agreement.

"Mom?" Alec's hand rested lightly on her arm. "If you're done here, we have a table booked for lunch."

"Celebrating your freedom, Maryse?" Margaret asked. Hearing the tone of her voice, Maryse almost regretted her earlier thoughts. The other woman sounded as if she would have preferred a divorce by way of a blade through Maryse's heart, rather than her hand.

"Hardly," Maryse told her. "The divorce was a mere formality that we should have gone through years ago. It's Jace's official choice of 'Lightwood' as his permanent name that we are celebrating."

Robert's face darkened. "Foolish," he declared. "Nothing good will come of that. Not for him and not for any of you. What's he going to be able to contribute to the family honor? Is letting the boy have his way out of pity really worth making a powerful woman like Imogen your enemy?"

"Focus on keeping the Dearborn honor intact, and let me worry about the Lightwood one," Maryse told him. "If I remember correctly, you just told everyone present that you wanted nothing more to do with the name or the family. As for Imogen - who do you think booked that table?" She cast a meaningful look at where Jace's grandmother was presently in conversation with Max – who for once looked at least marginally interested in what he was being told.

"We still shouldn't keep her waiting," Alec recommended. He nodded at the other two. "Margaret. Robert. Enjoy the wedding."

*

"To Jace Lightwood," Imogen said as she raised her glass. She sounded only a little wistful. "It's a lucky thing to find the place where one truly belongs."

"To the Lightwood family and associates," Jace replied. "To all of us."

Glasses clinked as they touched them over the table.

"To all my children," Maryse added.

Izzy put her glass down with a laugh. "I'll never forget his face when you called him Robert," she told her brother. "That was epic."

"He said he wanted to be no part of the family anymore," Alec replied with a shrug. "It seemed the logical thing to do."

"Let's think of more pleasant things than Robert now," Maryse suggested, though she couldn't help but spare a brief thought of her divorced husband, going through the wedding ceremony and the festivities that were surely to follow, his hand burning with ever-increasing intensity. That was what her own had done, making it harder to ignore.

The only reason she was comfortably using her hand now was that her children had insisted on a brief detour on the way to lunch.

"Runes may not help much here," Izzy had said as she deftly unwrapped Maryse's hand again once they were safe from prying eyes, "but we're lucky enough to have resources beyond that now."

Gale charms didn't play to the same rules as angelic Marks did – or maybe they simply weren't subject to the same limitations that came with the use of a stele. The design her daughter had drawn across and around the cut in Maryse's own blood, which was still seeping from the wound, looked like an _iratze_ with a few flourishes.

It had felt as if she had put an ice pack on the back of her hand, cooling the burn until it was barely noticeable anymore. She'd followed up with another design. As a rune, it would have had cleansing properties.

"I have no idea if that helps any," Izzy had said, "but I don't think it'll hurt to get anything that might have gotten into that cut back out of it."

Any contamination that the blade had carried, she had meant. Judging by the way her hand felt afterwards, Maryse supposed that an _iratze_ might actually heal the cut now. She decided against trying. Healing too fast or too cleanly would be suspicious. Besides, she needed that scar. It would make sure the rune stayed permanently deactivated.

 

_December 31 st, 2016_

Judging by the expression on his face, Anestis Redwood was no closer to liking any of them than he had been the last time they had met him, though Alec was starting to suspect that the man simply didn't have any other expressions in his repertoire.

It had been Tatyana's idea that they should come with her to talk to her aunt and uncle after they had filled her in on the _yin fen_ incident.

"If there's a likely source inside Idris, he probably knows about it," she'd said. "They may be retired, but they're both still in contact with former colleagues. Even if they don't, they may have a trick up their sleeves that could help you."

While not particularly looking forward to the encounter, they had agreed that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying.

"I'll listen," Anestis said when Tatyana broached the subject. "But I won't promise anything."

So they found themselves seated in the small kitchen once again, with cups of coffee put before them and the older Redwoods both listening as they reiterated the story of Adrian Hawkfeather and the _yin fen_ tin.

"He probably brought it in from outside," Anestis said when they finished. "Either hiking in from the Swiss border or through an illegal portal. I'm not aware of any active trade inside the borders, and anyone who would try with the recent increase in security and Downworlder control even outside of Alicante proper would have to be insane – or have a serious death wish."

"Imogen thinks he's most likely to use the New Year's Ball for his next move," Tatyana repeated what the others had told her. "I think that's a logical conclusion. Lots of people, lots of opportunity, and lots of publicity for whatever happens."

"It makes sense," Anestis allowed.

His niece gave him a long look. "Do you have any recommendation for them?"

"Not to go to the ball."

The corner of Alec's mouth twitched. "I fear that that is not an option," he said. "At least not one we can use without any consequences."

"You need some more eyes watching out," Elizabeth threw in. "People you can trust implicitly and who this Hawkfeather person doesn't know are associated with you. Preferably people who know how to remove him from the scene quickly, effectively and quietly if necessary, so as to avoid disturbing the rest of the ball."

Alec saw his own reaction at her words mirrored in his friends' faces. "Can you suggest anyone?" he asked carefully.

Elizabeth looked at her husband.

If anything, his scowl deepened. "I don't even remember how to dance," he claimed.

She chuckled at that. "Liar."

"We can't," he declared flatly. "Unless Tatyana wants to stay alone all evening?" The look he directed at his niece was bordering on a challenge.

"No," Tatyana said. "No, I don't want to stay alone all evening."

Anestis gave his wife a 'there you go' look just as she continued: "I haven't been to a ball in twelve years. If I can't find a dress in the house that fits, I'll have to glamor one on, I guess."

That did cause him to lose control of his expression, incredulous surprise showing as his ever-displeased look slipped. "You want to go to the ball?"

"Yes and no," Tatyana admitted, rubbing her hands nervously. "I don't want to go, but I do want to prove to myself that I can."

"What if the man with the Nightshade glamor shows up?" The words could have sounded cruel, but worry and concern were so thick in Anestis' voice now that it was impossible to mistake them for anything other than genuine fear of possible consequences.

Tatyana closed her eyes and her lips thinned at the thought. "Then I'll hope that you'll take the opportunity to arrest him and see who's beneath it."

Alec exchanged a look with the others. Since she'd asked them not to take her into their confidence, they hadn't told Tatyana what they had found out about the person who used Nightshade's appearance. From the corner of his eye, he could see Anestis' expression change a fraction. It hadn't escaped his attention that something was going on between them.

Still, he said nothing about it.

Instead, he nodded, very slowly. "Then so be it."

*

"Someone's early," Clary commented when the doorbell rang. It wasn’t even time for dinner yet, and definitely several hours before they expected the first guests for the evening to arrive.

A moment later, they heard a deep, displeased but familiar voice. "My name's Anestis Redwood, Mrs. Lightwood. I need to talk to your children – alone."

"Dining room," Alec said, stepping out into the corridor. He wasn't surprised. In fact, they had expected that some answers would be demanded before the ball.

They put a cup of coffee and a plate of pie before the man without asking him if he wanted them. The pastry's smell was absolutely delicious. Anyone in their right mind would want a piece.

Izzy came in last and closed the door firmly behind herself before she took her place at the table.

"Talk," Anestis said. He didn't specify what about, but they didn't pretend they didn't know. He did pick up the fork and start to reduce the food before him, at least.

"We kept things from Tatyana at her own request," Alec began. It seemed to be a good idea to get that part of it out of the way first. He didn't want Anestis to think they'd been tricking his niece into anything. "She said she didn't want any knowledge she might be asked about."

Anestis' mouth twitched, but he nodded. "By asked, you mean questioned. What are you involved in?"

"We don't know. We know some, and it's bad. There's more that we don't know, and it's probably worse."

"The Nightshade likeness isn't a glamor," Izzy said when Alec took a breath. "As far as we know, someone took hold of his body and is using it as his own now."

"Who?"

They all studied the man as Alec replied: "Valentine Morgenstern."

"The man you killed." He pointed at Clary with his fork.

She nodded. "The man whose body I killed. I fear his mind found… a different home."

Anestis adjusted to the news quickly, following the line of thought to the first catch: "Assuming this is true - How would he have gotten out of the cell?"

"By having powerful friends," Alec said. "There are things going on at a very high level that are … not right."

"Such as Consul Malachi being on Valentine's side," Anestis noted neutrally. "Stands to reason he wasn't alone. That's not a difficult conclusion to come to, and probably one that a number of people have drawn."

"But no one has said it out loud anywhere," Jace threw in. "You have to wonder why."

"People mind their own business, hope the situation will blow over and go away on its own," Anestis said. "Always been that way. What makes you think Valentine?"

Jace sighed. "He raised me. I know him. I saw the Nightshade body, and he moves exactly like him. It's like seeing the man I once called father with a glamor on. Everything else is logic."

"Why Nightshade?" Anestis asked. "It seems an odd coincidence that out of all the near-insane inmates in the City of Bones he picked that body."

"The angel blood ratio," Izzy answered. "His body would have been special to Valentine."

"And he would have known about that … why?"

"Coincidence, maybe," Alec said. "And maybe not."

"Nightshade was my mother's cousin," Clary spoke up. "It's entirely possible that Valentine made him that way to begin with."

Anestis looked at Alec, as their leader. "What will you do with this knowledge?"

"Watch and wait for now," Alec said. "He's still connected high up. We don't know where. We don't know who to trust. There are people after us for what we know so far. Confiding in the wrong people will kill us. So right now, we bide our time until we know more."

"I could be connected to him," Anestis said.

Alec gave a shrug that he hoped didn't look too false. "That was a risk we just had to take."

"You're still keeping secrets," the man accused him.

"Not all secrets are ours to tell." That was nothing less than the truth.

It was clear that Anestis considered demanding them anyway, but eventually relented. "Fair enough. What else do I need to know?"

"Not much." Alec took another moment to think about it. "Other than maybe that the person who is trying to get at us is somehow connected to Valentine as well."

"Unsurprisingly," their guest noted as he rose to his feet. "Now – are you going to tell me you poisoned the pie and will only give me the antidote after I have helped you arrest Hawkfeather?"

"No Sir," Alec's answer came immediately. "I promise there's no poison in the pie."

"There is something in the pie," Anestis returned.

"Apples, cinnamon and a lot of sugar," Jace suggested.

Anestis gave a bark of laughter at that. "You know what I was – what I am," he told them. "I know when something enters my body that is more than it seems to be."

"Merely a protection spell we got from a friend," Izzy said quickly. Alec's relationship to Magnus was well known, so let the man draw what conclusions he would. "If you felt there was something off about the pie, why did you eat all of it?"

"That," Anestis said, "was a risk I just had to take."


	33. Chapter 33

They stood outside together, watching the fireworks high above the buildings.

It appeared that the ban on warlocks in Alicante did not extend to warlock-made entertainment: the shapes that exploded in the sky, forming anything from amazing cascades of light and color to the images and entire scenes of angels vanquishing demons above the city could not have been made in any other way than by magic.

Alec found that he had enjoyed displays like this a lot more before he had learned things that made him doubt the heavenly nature of the beings they called angels.

The others seemed to feel similarly about it. In any case, they moved together a little more closely as they watched, taking comfort in each other's presence. No matter what happened: as long as they stayed together, they would be able to face anything.

"Help me up?" Jace asked, looking back at Alec. "Let me face the new year on my feet."

Shaking his head mutely at his _parabatai_ , Alec leaned down nevertheless to let Jace drape one arm around his shoulders to pull himself up while firmly putting his own around his friend's body for support. Jace had drawn amplification charms on every muscle strand he could control. With their help, he managed to stabilize himself in the hips enough to remain upright, as long as he could make his knees lock. Boots laced as tightly as they would go effectively served as ankle braces.

Clary moved in on his other side, slipping her arm around him as well.

Even knowing that most of his weight was carried by the other two, Jace rejoiced in being able to achieve some semblance of standing.

Max gave him a dark look. The youngest Lightwood clearly wasn't impressed by this development.

He managed to make it through most of the fireworks before the muscles to which he had access started to tremble, wresting control away from him.

"Your angel blood is certainly being busy, Jace," Maryse noted as she came to stand with them.

Once again seated, Jace looked up at her. "Wouldn’t mind if it went faster," he said. "But we're getting somewhere."

"I think it's time to open presents," Maryse declared, her eyes on Max, who made every effort to not look tired.

They went back inside for that, out of the stinging cold.

Imogen had sent a set of wrapped parcels earlier that day, with a note that while prior obligations prevented her from either dropping by in person or inviting them to come to Herondale Manor, she did have something to give to them for the occasion.

"Wow," Izzy said. She was the first to have hers open and laid out the pieces her parcel had contained.

"Leather armor?" Clary asked.

"Combat gear," Alec specified, sliding on the vest and jacket that had come out of his own on top of his t-shirt. As Clary had guessed, the material was a supple leather, stronger than it looked but without hindering movement a great deal. It was generously marked with protective runes. Each piece was embossed with a design of overlapping insignia: Lightwood on top of Herondale. On Clary's gear, the herons were replaced by fairy wings - the Fairchild symbol.

"What do you have?" Alec asked Jace.

To his surprise, he found that his grandmother had chosen not to single him out in any of the various manners she could have picked. Even though he hadn't mentioned anything about his recent improvement to her yet, he had received the same gear the others had – and with the same set of insignia that were put on Izzy's, Alec's and Max's, as they found when their youngest brother had also unwrapped his.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Max asked, annoyance in his voice.

"Put it on and wear it into battle," Izzy suggested.

"I'm not going to go into battle," her brother growled.

"Wear it to the library then." Izzy clearly didn't intend to let his perpetually foul mood affect her own.

She laughed when she saw the note Alec had enclosed with her present: _We cleaned it up, but we fear it'll need some more work from you. Sorry for that._ Her reaction was mirrored by Alec, who found a very similar note with the electrum staff, mentioning that it still needed some work but that she was going to do that for him in the course of the next week or two.

Her brother stepped back to snap the weapon into its extended shape and try a few moves where he wasn't likely to hit anyone with it, while Izzy lovingly ran her hands over the old dagger.

"Books?" Max declared, sounding no happier. "You give each other weapons and you give me _books_?"

"They're good books," Clary told him. She was happily sorting through the art supplies that had come out of her presents.

"Besides, you already disliked the armor," Jace pointed out. "How would we have known you would like weapons? Oh look – I got books, too!" He was a lot more enthusiastic about his than Max was about Harry Potter. Browsing the beautifully illustrated volumes, he ignored the boy's complaint that clearly they couldn't have known he was going to _get_ armor – or dislike it – at the time they had bought the books.

"More books!" Izzy announced, unpacking the next of her gifts – this one from Maryse.

Unwrapping Maryse's presents led to a moment of confusion in all of them. For some reason, she had chosen to give them books that covered subjects they had dealt with in the last weeks – Iron Sisters, Silent Brothers, the Demon Plague, werewolves and others. They were all rather basic volumes, however, and unlikely to provide them with any new insights.

It wasn't until Alec browsed through the two he had gotten that they realized that the books merely served as decoys: Neatly tacked to the last page, there was a list of names – She had compiled a directory for them of the Nephilim currently alive who specialized in the respective subjects, including their current locations and contact information.

To the books, Maryse had added a boot-knife for each of them –including Max, which proved that he was not, in fact, any more enthusiastic about weapons than he was about any other gift.

Clary's miniature lockets were received with great joy.

"Can I have a lock of your hair to put in this, Clary?" Jace asked as he lovingly studied her self-portrait. "I'll give you one of mine, too – then if we're ever separated, we have something to track each other by."

That idea was greeted with general enthusiasm, and Izzy drew her shiny new blade to do the cutting.

While they were busy completing their lockets, Maryse opened the box the group had given her. Her expression turned from happy surprise to pure delight when she spotted the small labels marked in Jace's impeccable calligraphy that were added to each of the scent bottles. The contents of that box was a kind of armor all of its own, fragrances charmed and spelled for various effects -protections to be worn in a way that would be impossible to remove from her, at least unless someone was to douse her in a bucket of water. As that was a rather rare occurrence in most situations she was likely to get into, she wasn't going to be too worried about it happening.

 

_January 1 st, 2017_

It was lucky that none of them had truly believed that they would be able to make an unobtrusive entrance. They felt the collective eyes shift towards them the moment they arrived to take the seats reserved for the Lightwood family.

They all felt the attention given them: Jace, the Herondale heir now called Lightwood; Alec, who of course hadn't brought his warlock boyfriend; Izzy, who thought she noticed closely scrutinizing looks that suggested someone had put it out that she might have found a source of _yin fen_ – though that might have been her imagination after the Hawkfeather incident; Clary, still Valentine's daughter; and Maryse, so recently divorced from her husband.

Robert was already there, sitting with the Dearborn family. His hand was thickly wrapped and clearly painful, going by the way he avoided using it.

Maryse, in contrast, had hers only lightly bandaged, not to protect the cut but to conceal the fact that it had turned into a thin, red scar down the back of her hand already. Let people comment on her self-control in handling the pain from the destroyed rune…

No one had bothered to take into consideration that Jace needed a little more space to maneuver and get to his assigned seat, which led to some jostling as they made their way through the room and between tables.

"You should have stayed home," Max suggested when they reached a particularly narrow bottleneck.

"And miss all the fun?" Jace returned.

The boy scowled at him. "It's not like you're going to dance."

"There's more to a ball than dancing," Jace told him. "But I trust you'll stand in for me and ask Clary to dance with you a time or two."

That shut Max up for the moment at least. Apparently he hadn't considered that he would count as perfectly capable of being on the dance floor.

Finally, they settled at their table.

Looking around, they spotted a number of familiar faces. The Penhallow family was seated within sight. So were the Blackthorns, but on the other side of the room. Aline and Helen, still keeping their relationship unknown outside their circle of close friends, would have some mingling to do if they wanted to spend any time together tonight.

It took them a little more time scanning the room before they spotted the Redwoods, strategically seated at a small table near a side entrance – or exit.

They had barely sat down and accepted glasses of wine from the trays attendants carried through the room when the first of a stream of visitors showed up, aiming to exchange a few words with Maryse. Some of them assured her of their sympathy in a manner that seemed almost genuine. Most were out for something they could turn into gossip.

Alec and Izzy quickly left the table, joining the first dancers.

Maryse tapped her youngest son's arm. "Ask Clary to dance," she told him, repeating Jace's suggestion from earlier.

Radiating displeasure, Max obeyed, leaving his mother and Jace alone at the table.

"Feel free to mingle," Jace told Maryse. "I'll make sure no one steals the table and enjoy the only ball in my life that won't end with aching feet for me."

She laughed at his words, but stayed where she was a little while longer, watching the other four on the dance floor.

Max was moving much less awkwardly than he probably feared, which once again confirmed their impression that he was his own greatest enemy on the road to a full recovery.

Imogen appeared from one side, sliding into one of the vacated chairs.

"A happy new year to you," she said. "And thank you very much for the present you sent."

"Thank you for the ones you sent us," Jace returned. "They're wonderful and they'll see good use."

"I'm keeping my eyes open for an institute the four of you can run together," Imogen told him. "Maybe we can find another place for Victor Aldertree so you can have New York back – but in any case, I'm sure you'll find use for them."

Jace looked at her with surprise. "That’s nice of you. But I'm not sure it's very smart at this time. Clary wants to get some more training in before we go anywhere near the field." As much as they all would have liked to have their banishment to Idris lifted, they'd reached the point where what they needed was the opportunity and the freedom to do more research than any institute would give them. They had only browsed the lists Maryse had given them the night before, but if they were to try and talk to even a fraction of those people to complete their information, they would be out and about a lot. It wasn't anything they could do while assigned to an institute.

The solution for that was clear enough.

"It is my impression that her training was progressing immensely well, and it would be hard for anyone to claim she isn't ready for the field," Imogen noted.

"She should travel," Jace said. "She never got to visit different institutes as a child and teen, so she should catch up on that."

Imogen looked at him thoughtfully. "Whose idea is this?"

"Ours. We could take her if we're free to travel."

It wasn't hard to see that she didn't like that idea, but she didn't object immediately. "I'll think about it and see what can be done," she said instead.

Jace stayed where he was after Imogen moved on. Aline came to sit with him for a few minutes, and so did Helen. Helen had barely had the time to exchange two full sentences with him before a young man Jace didn't know by name showed up to ask her to dance, and he sent her off with a smile and a wave.

He almost reconsidered his decision to stay at the table and not force his way through the crowd to do some mingling of his own when Sophie and Linnie appeared, trailing a group of friends. They kept him busy all the way until Clary returned to the table, laughing and officially to take a break from dancing, but actually following the pleading looks Jace had thrown her way whenever he thought she might be glancing at him.

She took the chair next to Jace and let him take her hand to kiss it.

"It's so sweet you're staying with him in spite of everything," one from the group declared. The tone bordered on a challenge, not matching the words at all. "Most people surely would want a husband who can defend himself and who can give them children."

They exchanged a look, silently settling for amusement rather than exasperation.

"If you think Jace can't defend himself, you're clearly not reading the newspaper," Clary declared. "And I'm sure Jace will be a wonderful father when we're ready to settle down and have children."

"Oh?" the younger girl asked. "I heard that people like he can't… you know…"

"People like me aren't deaf," Jace told her. "And you'd think people like you were old enough to know what is or isn't an appropriate topic for an event like this."

Moments like this were something he certainly wasn't going to miss. Would it have been too much to ask to get through this night without any awkward subjects? Instead of counting to ten, he went through tensing and relaxing the muscles he had regained so far.

Clary must have noticed, as she put a hand on Jace's leg under the table.

"Who's the woman Alec's dancing with now?" Linnie asked with a glance at the dance floor, effectively changing the subject. "I don't think I've ever seen her before."

"Tatyana Redwood," Clary told her. "Inquisitor's office. She's a friend."

"I thought she was a bit old for him," the girl declared.

"I heard Alec Lightwood likes a warlock," one of her friends announced, loud enough to be heard a few tables over.

"I should hope so," Jace told her. "The warlock certainly likes him back."

The girl covered her mouth with one hand, her expression shocked. "So it's true?" she asked. "He's… how do they _do_ it?"

Jace rolled his eyes at her. "Also not a subject appropriate for a ball," he declared. "Don't you younglings have etiquette lessons anymore?"

"Seems not," Clary agreed. "We should talk to Imogen about that. She'll know who to talk to in order to change it."

Sophie's cheeks had turned a deep red by now. "Sorry," she muttered. "I think Liza's had a bit too much to drink already tonight."

"Did not!" the other girl declared.

Before they could go any deeper into that subject, a commotion by the wardrobe drew everyone's attention.

*

"Whose coat is this?" The woman who raised the garment in question wore the uniform of the inquisitor's office. People were gathering around slowly, looking and, upon noticing with relief that it was not their own item that was causing an issue, retreating just far enough to watch with curiosity as the scene continued to play itself out.

"It's mine." Izzy stepped forward. "May I ask what you're doing with it?"

Alec stood at Izzy's shoulder, Lydia not far away. Maryse was approaching through the room, as Clary helped make space so Jace could join them as well. They shared a look, none of them really wondering what was going on.

They needed no words to know they all thought the same thing. How could they have been that stupid? They'd expected something to happen. They should have been keeping an eye on their coats, when instead the only thing they had guarded at all had been their table.

The officer held up a familiar metal tin. "Then this is yours, too?"

"It is not."

"It was in the pocket of your coat."

Maryse had reached her children. "What were you doing with Isabelle's coat?" she wanted to know.

"Someone mistook it for her own, noticed her mistake when she put her hand in the pocket and found the wrong things in there," the officer informed her coldly. "She reported to us immediately."

She pointed at a woman roughly Izzy's age standing off to the side with two men attired like herself.

"I'm very sorry, officer." Robert stepped forward, his progress hampered slightly by his attempt at keeping his hand close to his body so he wouldn't jostle it against anything or anyone. "My daughter does have a history of _yin fen_ abuse. I had hoped that her claims that she was clean now were true – though I can't say I really believed it."

The officer he addressed eyed him with some distaste. "And you are..?"

"Robert Dearborn," he declared, sketching a small bow.

"And you are here with your daughter, Mr. Dearborn?" the woman asked him. "If you had suspicions, I find it surprising she had the tin in her coat that openly."

She certainly wasn't stupid. Alec hoped she had caught on to it that something was not quite right.

"I was not," Robert told her. "She's here with my ex-wife."

Alec glanced around, trying to spot Adrian Hawkfeather, and failing to find him. He saw that Tatyana was standing with Aline and Helen, Elizabeth Redwood at the edge of the dance floor, ready to step up to offer protection if necessary, but staying out of the way to avoid embarrassment if it wasn't. Anestis was nowhere to be seen.

"The _yin fen_ isn't Izzy's," Alec said loudly. "Everything else aside, my sister isn't stupid. She wouldn't leave drugs unattended in a coat pocket where everyone could find them."

Izzy gave him a lopsided smile. "Thanks, I think," she muttered.

"How do you propose it got in there then, Mr. Dearborn?" the officer asked.

"Lightwood," Alec corrected. "Clearly, someone slipped it in with the intent of having it found."

It would have been nice to have discussed this in private, rather than in front of a room full of people, but at this point, any request for privacy could only hurt them. People were forming opinions and drawing conclusions already. They needed to see this through where everyone could take home the right message – though how they were going to achieve that was beyond Alec at the moment.

"And why would anyone do that, Mr. Lightwood?"

"To create exactly this situation." That was Jace, speaking loudly to be heard even though most people wouldn't be able to see him with everyone else standing around him. "This is not the first time someone has tried this particular stunt."

The officer's voice had an edge as she turned to Jace. "Is your name Mr. Lightwood?"

"It is," Jace told her.

There was some giggling in the crowd.

"I was speaking to the other Mr. Lightwood," the woman declared, unfazed.

"What my brother said," Alec announced.

The inquisition officer fixed Izzy with a hard stare. "Is there anyone besides you and your brothers who knows about this prior incident?"

Izzy nodded, but it was a very different voice that spoke up.

"There is indeed." Imogen Herondale rose from the table where she had been talking to a group of older men and women. She came stalking towards them, her dress swirling around her. Whether it was the weight of her office or the expression on her face that made people move out of her way was impossible to tell. "Isabelle reported the first incident to me immediately."

Hushed muttering broke out on all sides. The situation had just changed, and the tides were changing with it. There was a very slight shift among the people standing around them, a slight movement away from Robert's group and towards theirs as impressions realigned themselves.

Jia Penhallow, who had positioned herself clearly with Maryse immediately, eyed the crowd with an expression of distaste.

"Was there _yin fen_ involved in the other incident, Madam Inquisitor?" the officer asked Imogen.

She inclined her head. "There was. A tin like that one. It was given to me untouched, unused."

If anything could be said in the officer's favor, it was that she didn't let the presence of her boss intimidate her into not doing her job properly. "Where is that tin now?"

"Under examination by our people," Imogen told her "Hoping to track it back to where it came from."

"But that is nonsense!" Robert declared. "Why would anyone sneak an expensive and powerful drug into someone's coat just like that?"

Imogen took another step forward, but a deep voice from the direction of the door interrupted her. "You can ask him that question right now." Adrian Hawkfeather was shoved into the room, followed closely by Anestis Redwood, who held the younger man's arms painfully twisted onto his back.

"And who are _you?_ " the officer asked. The look she directed at Imogen clearly said that she would have been happy to step aside and leave the situation to her if she so desired.

The Inquisitor shook her head slightly, gesturing for her to continue what she had started.

Anestis made his way over to them, pushing Hawkfeather ahead of him. "Anestis Redwood, ma'am," he declared. "Squad AR2, Special Forces. I saw this youngster slip the box into that coat and talk to her." He gestured at the woman who had reported the tin. He only needed one hand to keep Hawkfeather subdued.

The young woman looked as if she suddenly greatly regretted the fact that she was standing between two inquisition officers.

"Then he made off, and I went to have a little chat with him."

"And by chat, you mean--?" the officer wanted to know.

"Talk," Anestis said. "I didn't touch him other than to keep him from running off again."

"He took my stele," Hawkfeather blurted out, as if that was his most pressing issue at the moment.

"Damned right I did," Anestis agreed. He pulled it from where it was stuck in his belt and tossed it at Imogen. She looked a little surprised herself when she caught it securely. "The high inquisitor can decide when – and if – you will get it back."

"I didn't want to do it!" the woman who had made the report declared, apparently deciding that her best chances lay with changing sides right then. "He told me to! He promised me—"

"Oh, shut up!" Hawkfeather snarled at her.

The officer raised an eyebrow at him. "I'd heed my own advice if I was you," she said evenly.

"Ma'am." That was Robert once again. "Maybe it would be better to conduct this entire affair somewhere else… in private."

"Oh, now we should be doing this in private?" Alec couldn't quite keep himself back. "You were perfectly happy doing it in public when you thought Izzy was the guilty party here."

Imogen shot him a look that wasn't quite as disapproving as it probably should have been.

"As much as I regret to say so," she said, "we should indeed move this elsewhere. I would hate for him to use some opportunity to disappear into the crowd." She pointed at Hawkfeather, then at his accomplice. "Or her, for that matter."

"Very well," the officer agreed. "Lucky thing it's not far to the inquisition from here." She looked at Anestis. "Can you bring him without letting him run off?"

"It'll be my pleasure, ma'am," the man replied, steering his charge back towards the door.

The officer pointed at Izzy. "Come with us, please. And your brothers, probably… anyone else who knew about the first incident?"

"Clary," all three of them said as one.

"Is she here?"

Clary raised her hand.

"You, too, then. Do you want anyone else with us? Your father?" Her tone made it clear that she would have declined that in Izzy's place.

Isabelle laughed. "No need. Mr. Dearborn is of no consequence to me."

Robert stepped forward, his face pale with fury.

"Don't," Maryse warned him before he could speak. "You made it clear enough that you wanted nothing to do with our family anymore. Start living up to your words."

*

A few minutes later, they stood in the inquisitor's office. Adrian Hawkfeather was securely handcuffed, Anestis still standing guard behind him, a rock-solid presence that rendered any thought of escape useless. Imogen had taken a seat behind her desk. The three officers stood at attention.

Hawkfeather's accomplice was not restrained, but looked close to tears as she stood before her guards.

The Lightwood siblings were clustered together, while Maryse and Max had taken chairs by the wall. They'd come along at Imogen's suggestion to let Max experience some of the excitement of the inquisition's job up close right away. None of those present doubted that her real intention had been to spare them from having to deal with Robert any more.

That hadn't worked out too well. Jia Penhallow and another high-ranking Shadowhunter had come along, serving as neutral witnesses, and Robert had barged in immediately, declaring that since Jia was clearly on Maryse's side, he, too, should be coming.

"He just told me to take that coat and look in its pocket and report what I found!" The young woman, who had given her name as Eliza Hazelwood, told them. She was close to tears. "I had nothing to do with anything else! He said he didn't want to report her himself because he didn't want to get into trouble with her family! He said he was too afraid of what her brother might do to him if he found out, but he thought it was his obligation to report it, and that if it seemed like it had all happened by coincidence, no one would have any reason to do anything—I didn't know he _put_ it there!"

"Calm down a little, Eliza," Imogen recommended. "You're not under investigation here. How do you know Adrian Hawkfeather?"

"We trained together a few times since he returned from New York," she said in a tiny voice. "I really thought he was trying to do the right thing."

"Well?" Imogen turned towards Adrian. "What do you have to say to this?"

"Nothing," Hawkfeather replied, his face stony. "I will say nothing."

Imogen sighed as she looked at Izzy. "When you delivered the first tin to me, you said someone bumped into you in the street."

"Yes," Izzy replied calmly. "I checked my bag because it seemed deliberate, like he might have tried to mug me. I found the tin, and we brought it straight to you."

"Can you identify the person who did it?" Imogen asked.

"I can," Izzy said, turning to indicate Adrian. "It was him."

"Did you know him before that day?"

"Yes. We served in New York together."

Hawkfeather's face twitched. He seemed to object to the idea that they had done anything together.

"Do you have any idea why he might be doing this to you?" Imogen wanted to know.

"No." Izzy's voice was firm and her eyes cold and hard as steel as she turned to look at the man. "But it wasn't the first thing he did to us."

Imogen took that information in stride. "Can you tell us what he did before?"

Izzy didn't look away from him for an instant. "He manipulated Alec's bow. He's the reason Jace was hit that day."

"Nonsense!" Robert called out. "Why would anyone do that? Wanting to defend your brother is one thing – lying to the Inquisitor and making such outrageous accusations is quite another!"

"Robert." Imogen's voice was icy. "You are here as a witness. So witness – in silence. If you cannot do that, I will have one of my officers here gag you. Do I make myself clear?"

At his curt nod, she rose from her chair. "Hannah, you need to take over here. Since my son was Jace's biological father, I shouldn't be involved in a case that touches on his recent injury."

She sat with Maryse and Max while the younger woman took her place behind the desk, accepting the statement without question. It hadn't escaped the Lightwoods' notice that Imogen had been happy enough to run the proceedings while no one other than them had known that she already had that knowledge.

"With your permission, Hannah," Robert said, stepping forward to address the younger officer. "It must be clear to you – to anyone, really – that such a claim can only serve—"

She cut him off. "That is Ms Raventree for you, Mr. Dearborn. Besides which, Inquisitor Herondale's order stands. Witness in silence if you wish, and leave the room if you can't. If I need anything from you, I will ask."

Turning her attention to Hawkfeather, she continued. "Would you like to comment on that?"

"No." He declared.

Hannah Raventree looked at the Lightwood siblings. "What gives you reason to suspect him?"

Izzy made a motion in Alec's direction, suggesting that he should take over.

He had been carrying the memory photographs Magnus had given them with him since they had first met Adrian Hawkfeather while shopping. It hadn't been that difficult to anticipate that they might need them quickly if things escalated.

Smoothing them out, he handed them to her.

"What is that?" Robert wanted to know, once again forgetting that he wasn't supposed to speak.

"Printouts from the surveillance camera," Hannah assumed, holding them up one at a time.

Robert looked at them, disbelief stark on his face. "If they had those, why didn't they come forward with them right away?" He stared at his children. "Why didn't you?"

Hannah's tone suggested that she thought the matter was self-evident. "Probably because they didn't want to get whoever got them these into trouble while they had another choice." She angled the images so Hawkfeather could see them as well. "Still sure you have nothing to say?"

"That is impossible!" The man yelled as he saw himself on the photographs. "The camera wasn't supposed to be—" He broke off the moment he realized what he had just said.

"Would you like to tell us who was supposed to turn it off?" Hannah asked him neutrally. "Or anything else about it?"

"No." Sweat was starting to bead on his face. "I have nothing to say on the matter."

"Very well," Hannah said. "I believe this has become a matter too serious to take any chances. I'm sure the Soul Sword will help us get to the bottom of this."

Imogen nodded to herself where she sat.

Hawkfeather's reaction was as immediate as it was unexpected. His eyes seemed to bulge as the muscles in his arms strained against the handcuffs. His mouth opened, but the only sound that emerged was inarticulate, sounding like an accident rather than anything that could convey meaning.

Then he dropped where he stood, his knees buckling under him. He didn't even try to catch his fall.

Anestis turned him over, coolly looking into the face that stared up at him without moving.

"Dead," he announced.

"You didn't even check for a pulse!" Robert started towards them, only to be held back by one of the other officers at a nod from the woman behind the desk.

"Trust me, Dearborn," Anestis said, sparing him only the most fleeting of glances. "I know death when I see it."

"What killed him?" Eliza sounded close to a panic now.

"If I was to guess," Izzy said, her voice calm and measured, "I would expect that an autopsy will find he had a spell lodged in his aorta, just above the heart. One that exploded like a miniature bomb just this moment."

"You have seen this before?" Hannah asked her.

Izzy nodded. "In the Seelies who attacked us in Heidelberg a few weeks ago. They were killed the same way. There's an autopsy report from me on one of them somewhere. I think Inquisitor Herondale has a copy."

"A pity," Hannah said. "I expect he had knowledge someone didn't want him to share."

"At least he as much as confessed to the manipulation before he died," Imogen noted. "I believe that should be sufficient to clear Alexander Lightwood from any remaining suspicion, though you will find that I put in a request to clear his file several weeks ago."

Hannah tapped on Imogen's screen a few times, scanning the notes left in Alec's file. "It should be a formality," she said.

"Izzy, too," Alec told her. "She reported the first _yin fen_ tin when she didn't have to. That should prove to everyone she's not helplessly succumbing to it when faced with the opportunity."

She tapped again and nodded. "That should not be an issue either. It appears that this is the main – or the only – reason for your current stay in Idris?"

They both nodded.

"Then you'll probably want to return to your Institute as soon as we get the clearance recorded. Please expect that we'll need you again to make a statement sometime in the near future."

"Actually," Alec said, "We were thinking about requesting some leave. We started training Clary these last few weeks – she grew up as a mundane, you see – and we've come to the conclusion that that would best be continued by travelling. So if the request goes through, we wouldn't return to New York for another few months."

"What?" It seemed that Robert still had more unbidden input to give. "You would leave Jace behind on his own? Some friends you are."

"Obviously, Jace would come with us," Clary told him.

Robert favored his foster son with a disdainful look. "And spend all your time travelling acting as his nurse and protectors?"

"Actually," Jace said, meeting Robert's look with a smug one of his own, "You may remember that I have an immense angel blood ratio and that no one was quite sure how that would affect my body's ability to regenerate." If Robert remembered no such thing, that was probably because no one other than Jace had ever insisted that it was an option.

He moved forward in his chair and pushed his feet off the footrest and onto the floor.

Alec, understanding what he was about to do, moved in and reached out to let Jace use him as a support to pull himself up again.

"We know now." The strain of balancing on his feet – though he had done what Alec had threatened to do and worn combat boots to the ball – even with his knees locked backwards and Alec taking a good part of his weight, was evident in Jace's voice. "If we delay another few weeks, that problem should solve itself."

He glanced at Imogen over his shoulder, noticing her expression of shocked but happy surprise with satisfaction before mouthing "Down" at Alec.

"Start planning your itinerary," Inquisitor Herondale told them, her tone almost an order. "And leave the rest to me. I'll make it happen."


	34. Chapter 34

_Epilogue_

He had never realized just how much damage he had done to his body when he had injected Downworlder blood into its veins. He had gotten so used to the after-effects, he'd stopped to even notice them.

It wasn't until he came to in that dirty, dark cell that he remembered what it was like to have a body that was pure.

Not in a physical sense, of course. There was nothing pure about it in that respect. He was dirty, reeking so badly even he could smell it on himself, hair and beard filthy and crawling with life that had no business being there. His wrists were tied down with padded straps. To protect that body, as he found out. He found the scars later, marks left where the previous occupant had tried to end himself.

For a moment, he had thought he'd landed in Hell, though he couldn't understand why. Hadn't he always done their bidding most fervently? Hadn't he always worked for the good of their cause?

He heard the screams around him, agonized, desperate.

As he started to understand where he was, understanding of what had happened came as well.

It might have been a side effect of those injections. It might have been a side effect of that time Azazel had swapped his mind with that of that filthy warlock.

He chose to believe that it was the mercy of the Angel instead.

Why else would he have given him a body so pure? This body, he had learned since, had the highest ratio of Angel blood recorded outside of Clarissa and Jonathan, his own creations. He'd been warned that the visions may have been connected to the body, rather than the mind. That he, too, might begin to suffer from them.

Suffer? He would have welcomed them.

None had come so far, which was a bit of a disappointment.

Once cleaned up, shaved and his hair cut far enough to get what remained of it clean, with a fresh stele in his pocket and a set of new runes applied to strengthen him after the deprivations that body had suffered during the last years, he had been given quarters that were nothing short of luxurious.

But they were underground, as all of the Silent City, and he wanted to see the world through these new eyes. They told him to rest, to let the body he now owned recover, but action was surely better for that than sitting idly.

He'd moved back into the place he had called his home for ten long years, staying in close contact.

They'd all been in agreement that his children, by blood and by fostering, had to be removed from the equation. They and their friends were too dangerous, too curious, too impossible to control or guide. They had also turned out to be stubbornly resilient to attempts at silencing them permanently.

He still didn't know how they had managed to escape the circles they had bound them in. Not even Clarissa and Jonathan should have been able to break out of those. Whatever unknown help they had had: it made things more difficult.

He'd advanced the thought that they should simply be shot on sight, eliminating the complications that more elaborate plans had. The more parameters there were in a plot, the more opportunity they would have to wind out of it.

He'd been outvoted, at least for the moment. The four had too many connections. Questions would be asked. People might dig. There would be no end to the number of Nephilim they might have to silence to prevent anything they didn't want out in the open from being made public.

There also was the issue that they did not know what exactly those four knew, and what they had shared with others – or even who those others were. What had they told Imogen Herondale? What the Penhallows? What the Redwoods?

There was another complication, and that one he found himself in full agreement with after a moment's thought: They needed to find out more about who the unknown player in their game was: the force that had rescued four Nephilim and a warlock from three different realms and spit them back out – not only unharmed, but somehow improved.

They had doubtlessly learned things. They shouldn't have been able to keep him out of his old house, and yet they had. At least he was reasonably sure that unless they started to pull the house apart brick by brick, they wouldn't come across his safe.

They also shouldn't have been able to counter the surveillance gear Robert had installed in the house the way they had.

That wasn't even counting the immense dislike Robert had developed to his own former home after his last visit there. He'd looked as if he was going to be sick every time someone had suggested he go back to check on them ever since.

Now they were going to leave Idris, which would make it harder to supervise them.

On the other hand, it was just as well. Lots of things could happen to travelers. Accidents occurred and misfortunes befell people at times.

He still had a few plans up his sleeves.


	35. Chapter 35

ANNEX

Dates of birth as I use them for Winds of Change

Their relative ages are mostly determined based on "Shadowhunters & Denizens of Downworld", with some adjustment for logic; days and months of birthdates are taken from the Shadowhunters Wiki and the years of birth are adjusted to an assumed year of 2016 for the TV show.

 

| 

   
  
---|---  
  
Blackthorn, Helen

| 

*1996  
  
Fairchild, Clarissa "Clary"

| 

August 23rd, 1998  
  
Greymark, Lucian/Garroway, Luke

| 

January 3rd, 1977  
  
Herondale (Montclair), Céline

| 

*1978  
  
Herondale, Imogen

| 

*1953  
  
Herondale, Jonathan Christopher "Jace"

| 

(January 18th) 1997  
  
Herondale, Stephen

| 

*1973  
  
Lewis, Simon

| 

October 17th, 1997  
  
Lightwood, Alexander "Alec" Gideon

| 

September 12th, 1996  
  
Lightwood, Isabelle "Izzy" Sophie

| 

May 15th, 1998  
  
Lightwood, Robert

| 

September 17th, *1972  
  
Lightwood (Trueblood), Maryse

| 

October 30th, 1975  
  
Lightwood, Maxwell

| 

August ?, 2005  
  
Morgenstern, Valentine

| 

November 29th, 1975  
  
Penhallow, Aline

| 

*1997  
  
Penhallow, Jia

| 

*1974  
  
Roberts, Maia

| 

*1997  
  
 

Special thanks goes to Tao here, for making a gimmick for this story and actually creating the notebook in which Jace writes his translation of David's Journal:

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

Sources:

Cassandra Clare: An Illustrated History of Notable Shadowhunters & Denizens of Downworld; Simon & Schuster 2016

Cassandra Clare & Joshua Lewis: The Shadowhunter's Codex; McElderry Books, 2013

Cassandra Clare: The Official Clave Files in the City of Bones 10th Anniversary Edition; 2017

http://shadowhunters.wikia.com

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blizzard (Cover art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13336320) by [greeniron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniron/pseuds/greeniron)




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